Iron, Ink and Summons: How English Law Bound the Crown

Gallery 3: The Crown and the Law, 1150–1300

1Wall text. In the 1100s an English king could raise money, punish enemies and claim land with few checks on his power. Over the next two centuries, three things began to limit him: written charters, the common law of the royal courts and Parliament. These limits grew slowly, and they did not protect everyone. Many people in England were unfree peasants, bound to work a lord's land.

2Case 1: Iron bar for a trial by ordeal (replica). Before 1215, some accused people were tested by ordeal. A person might have to carry a red-hot iron bar a few steps. The hand was bandaged, and if it was healing cleanly after three days, people believed God had shown that the person was innocent. Priests blessed each ordeal. In 1215 a great council of the Church in Rome forbade priests to take part. English royal judges needed another way to decide cases, so they began asking a jury of local men whether an accused person was guilty.

3Case 2: Page from a Year Book (copy, about 1300). Lawyers in the king's courts wrote down the arguments made in cases and what the judges decided. These notebooks were later called Year Books. Lawyers and judges studied them to see how earlier cases like their own had been decided, and judges often followed those earlier decisions. Rules built up this way, case by case, became part of the common law.

4Case 3: The Charter of the Forest, 1217 (copy). English kings claimed huge areas as royal forest, where only the king could hunt deer. Forest officers punished people harshly for hunting there and even for cutting wood. In 1217 the advisers of the boy king Henry III issued this charter together with a new version of the Magna Carta. It said that no one should lose life or limb for taking the king's deer; a fine or a year in prison would be the punishment. It also let free men graze their pigs in the forest.

5Case 4: A parliament summons, 1295 (copy). King Edward I needed money for wars in France, Scotland and Wales. He ordered each sheriff to send two knights from each county, two citizens from each city and two townsmen from each town to meet with nobles and bishops at Westminster. His summons to the bishops repeated an old rule of law: "What touches all should be approved by all." Later kings called parliaments of these groups again and again, often when they wanted new taxes.