by mark hagger, bangor university writs have been defined in various ways in the past, 1 although these generally agree that such documents comprised a command or mandate, or, more rarely, a notification or instruction. A writ can be addressed to a variety of persons: lords, officials, a court, or even to everyone. All writs, even when they look like notifications, require those who are addressed to take some action, or else to stop doing something. There are no surviving pre conquest writs, but there is some evidence that they did exist, 2 and it seems very likely that anglo norman writs derived from anglo saxon precedents. Stevenson used it to describe an act of king william i for st martin le grand in london that he had examined in 1896. 4 his definition has recently been attacked by professor richard sharpe, who provided a new one on the process.

5 in sharpe rsquo s view, there are two elements that must be met for an act to be categorized as a writ charter. First, it must be addressed to an assembly of some kind if addressed to an individual it is almost certainly a writ. 6 second, a writ charter must provide notification of a transfer of property or rights. Both types of writ need to be considered here, because both had a role to play in the transmission of law or the doing of justice. After 1066, the norman kings used writ charters ndash although not exclusively ndash to transmit their legislation to the shires of england. Examples include william i rsquo s legislation on the amendment of episcopal laws, 7 henry i rsquo s coronation charter, 8 his legislation of christmas 1100 concerning the coinage, 9 and his legislation of 1108 concerning the meetings of shire and hundred courts and the appropriate forum for pleas concerning lsquo the partition or seizure of lands rsquo.

10 the contents of these documents would be read out to the suitors of the court, perhaps in latin but certainly in the two vernacular languages of those addressed: french and english. Writ charters might also notify the relevant local assembly of the results of lawsuits about property or rights, as in the following example from normandy of 1108 18: henry king of the english to richard, bishop of bayeux, and all his barons and faithful men of the hi mois, greeting. Know that i have granted to god and st martin and the monks of troarn henceforth in perpetuity the whole of le marais about which there was a plea in my court between the said monks and robert of ussy. For the said robert recognised their right which he had unjustly claimed, and that claim to le marais which he had in it he quit claimed to god and st martin before me. And i will and grant and firmly command that henceforth the abovesaid church shall hold in peace and honourably and quitly and perpetually the whole of that le marais from claim, witnesses: robert, count of meulan, and nigel of aubigny.

11 finally, writ charters were also one vehicle used to transmit privileges which might be seen as grants of private law 12 to churches. The abbey of bury st edmunds, for example, received a succession of writ charters from king edward the confessor, william i, william ii and henry i concerning the right to a mint, the liberty of the eight and a half hundreds, protection for the abbot and his rights, and the abbey rsquo s exemption from scots and gelds. 13 richard sharpe has recently argued that these writ charters expired on the death of the beneficiary or of the king who granted them, and it may also have been the case that their use was curtailed by the deaths of those addressed by them. Further, the grants conveyed by most writ charters were not expressly said to have been made in perpetuity in perpetuum , and so were not permanent on that basis, too. 14 concern about writ charters, and the lack of permanence of the grant contained within them, seems to have been felt more acutely in normandy than in england, perhaps because writs were an innovation there. The great majority of norman writ charters were consequently drafted to include perpetuity wording, but it remained the case throughout henry i rsquo s and stephen rsquo s reigns that most english ones did not.

15 other changes that might have helped to increase the longevity of english writ charters were made, however. The names of individual bishops and sheriffs, for example, were gradually omitted from the addresses of writ charters, to be replaced by an impersonal reference to these offices. Thus, while for most of henry rsquo s reign writ charters were addressed to, for example, lsquo robert, bishop of lincoln, and hugh of buckland and all barons french and english of buckinghamshire rsquo , 16 they came to be addressed simply to lsquo the bishop of salisbury and his sheriff and justiciars and all his barons and faithful men, french and english, of berkshire rsquo.

The synonyms lsquo justice rsquo iusticia and lsquo justiciar rsquo iusticiarius may have been created for this reason, as it is clear that men had been acting in the capacity for decades before these terms were introduced. A stage in this process might be seen in one of william ii rsquo s acts for durham, which is addressed to, among others, the king rsquo s iustificatores. 18 thus the address now remained valid regardless of who actually filled the offices concerned. It may have been these same concerns that led to the increasing use and development of the general address, which was gaining ground on the shire address by the 1120s and had become a formalized, hierarchical list. Thus henry i rsquo s edict of 1135 for normandy concerning homicides during the periods covered by the truce of god was addressed generally, 19 and so, too, were stephen rsquo s and henry ii rsquo s coronation charters. 20 by c.1170 the writ charter had fallen out of use altogether, and had been completely replaced by the generally addressed charter that could be delivered to any assembly at any time, both present and future.

Writs, however, were a much longer lived species of document, with some of the common law writs developed under henry ii continuing in use until 1832. Writs were extremely versatile, and that made them central to the royal administration. It seems that by henry i rsquo s reign they had come to be routinely used in normandy as well as in england. Indeed, such was their evident utility that the anglo norman magnates were soon aping the royal administration by sending writs to their own officials and men. Writs issued by count stephen of mortain, count amaury of evreux, robert of la haye du puits and others still survive, either in originals or in cartulary copies.

21 the french count theobald of blois, who was henry i rsquo s nephew, used a writ on at least one occasion, 22 and the documents were also transported to southern italy by anglo norman churchmen seeking appointment there such as richard palmer and peter of blois. 23 henry i rsquo s writs provide our best evidence for the identities and functions of the men who staffed the royal administration, both at the centre and in the localities. As much royal business was concerned with the doing of justice, a large number of henry rsquo s writs also tell us something about that subject, with writs addressed to lords commanding them to do justice, or to return property to an individual, or to desist from causing injury to another. One related development in henry i rsquo s reign was the nisi feceris lsquo unless you do it rsquo clause. This allowed automatic recourse to a procedure whereby the king rsquo s justices or another named figure might intervene without further resort to the king, should his writ be ignored, thereby saving the beneficiary a potentially lengthy journey. 24 thus, when disputing his right to the wood of northawe with the abbot of st albans in 1159, robert of valognes took himself to the king in france and obtained a writ commanding that he should be put in possession of the land that his predecessors had held by hereditary right.

The abbot declared that robert rsquo s father had held the wood only on a life interest, and so refused to give him possession of it, but robert rsquo s writ contained a nisi feceris clause commanding the earl of leicester to act should robert be unjustly deprived of his property. Robert thus presented his writ to the earl who immediately summoned the abbot to court, thereby saving him a second lengthy journey to importune the king in person. 25 the heyday of the writ as a legal instrument began with henry ii, and continued past the end of the period covered by this project. The writ became so closely connected to royal control that during henry rsquo s reign it was a maxim that no one need answer in their lord rsquo s court concerning their free tenement without a royal writ. 26 as michael clanchy noted, henry ii in particular used writs in common form as the framework of his legal reforms, with documents mass produced from a handful of exemplars. 27 these exemplars were copied into, and formed the structure of, the treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of england.

Glanvill explains how each of the new possessory assizes and other actions was to be used, but the writs do that for themselves, too, and thus provided sheriffs with both instructions and procedure. The writ for novel dissesin recent disinheritance , for example, was issued to those who had unjustly lost lands to another in the recent past. Unjustly and without a judgement disseised him of his free tenement in such and such a place since my last voyage to normandy. Gives you security for prosecuting his claim, you are to see that the chattels which were taken from the tenement are restored to it, and that the tenement and the chattels remain in peace until the sunday after easter.

And meanwhile you are to see that the tenement is viewed by twelve free and lawful men of the neighbourhood, and their names endorsed on this writ. And summon them by good summoners to be before me or my justices on the sunday after easter, ready to make the recognition. Or his bailiff if he himself cannot be found, on the security of gage and reliable sureties to be there then to hear the recognition. 28 when the day for the hearing arrived, the writ, now with the names of the witnesses written on it, would be handed to the justices by the sheriff, and the plea would be heard and concluded. That the writ was handed over was evidence that it had been actioned, and the case heard, and it has also caused these documents to be described as lsquo returnable writs rsquo. The actions commenced by these writs were popular, and increased in number under henry rsquo s successors, particularly as a result of the creation of the writ of entry, which focused on a specific flaw in a tenant rsquo s title. The norman tr s ancien coutumier contains descriptions of actions that could be commenced only by royal writ, and also includes models for the writs that were to be used to begin the actions that were equivalent to novel dissesin.

Paragraph on My Childhood Memory Essays

mort d rsquo ancestor withholding an inheritance from an heir and darrein presentment the right to present to a church , among others. These reveal the same use of sureties and witnesses, and also that the writs in normandy were returnable, like their english counterparts. Glanvill, the treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of england commonly called glanvill. Cronne oxford, 1956 3: regesta regis stephani ac mathildis imperatricis ac gaufridi et henrici ducum normannorum 1135 ndash 1154. regesta regum anglo normannorum, the acta of william i 1066 ndash 1087 , ed.

Van caenegem, royal writs in england from the conquest to glanville: studies in the early history of the common law selden society, 77, 1959. Clanchy, from memory to written record: england 1066 ndash 1307 2nd edn. Hagger, lsquo the earliest norman writs revisited rsquo , historical research. Hudson, the formation of the english common law: law and society in england from the conquest to magna carta london, 1996. Sharpe, lsquo the use of writs in the eleventh century rsquo , anglo saxon england. Sharpe, lsquo address and delivery in anglo norman royal charters rsquo , in charters and charter scholarship in britain and ireland.