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The Court of the Verge: the Jurisdiction of the Steward and Marshal of the Household in Later Medieval England

1970; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/385598

1545-6986

W. R. Jones,

Medieval and Early Modern Justice

The royal court known variously as the “court of the verge,” the “court of the steward and marshal,” or the “Marshalsea court,” and which was said to try “pleas of the hall” ( placita aule ), appeared as a distinct and separate tribunal during the second half of Edward I's reign. It is difficult to trace the process whereby it distinguished its highly specialized jurisdiction over matters of personal interest to the king and his household from the general jurisdiction exercised coram rege and thereby succeeded in separating itself from the undifferentiated Curia Regis . Since at least the early thirteenth century the steward of the household was viewed as having a special judicial role within the household, of which he was the appointed head. As a result of that process of departmentalization which created the other agencies of royal justice and administration, a special household jurisdiction appeared toward the end of the thirteenth century. About the year 1290 the court of the steward and marshal of the household emerged as a separate and identifiable judicial body with its own personnel, procedures, and rolls, and with a jurisdictional competence encompassing pleas of trespass within the verge, cases of debt involving members of the household, and pleas of contempt of the king's rights of purveyance and carriage. In substance, the court claimed to try cases involving the domestic servants of the crown and certain acts affronting the royal dignity and, in geographical terms, breaches of the king's peace within the vicinity of the royal residence, which was assumed to extend twelve miles in every direction from the especially sacrosanct presence of the sovereign.