Note 230 — Chapter III · SECURITY OF THE ROADS

This power of running down the first comer was, like many practices of the time, at once a guarantee for public safety and a dangerous arm in the hands of felons. Robbers used it, and it happened sometimes that they imprisoned by this means their own victims. Alisot, wife of Henry of Upatherle, sets forth to the king that her husband was made prisoner by the Scotch at the battle of Stirling, remained their captive more than a year, then returned after having paid forty pounds ransom. In his absence, Thomas of Upatherle and Robert of Prestbury seized on the fields which he possessed at Upatherle, divided them, pulled down the houses and acted as the owners, taking to their own homes all the goods they could move. The prisoner’s return surprised them; as soon as they knew that he had re-appeared on his lands, “the said Thomas, by false agreement between him and the said Robert, raised hue and cry on the said Henry and put upon him that he had robbed him (Thomas) of his chattels to the value of £100.” They were believed; “the said Henry was taken and imprisoned in Gloucester castle for a long time,” waiting for the coming of the justices, exactly as the statute said. Henry recovered his liberty in the end, and obtained a writ against his enemies; but they brought force and came to meet their victim, “and beat the said Henry in the town of Gloucester, that is they bruised his two arms, both his thighs, and both his legs, and his head on both sides, and quite wrecked and vilely treated his body, so that he barely escaped death.” The king’s reply is not satisfactory: “If the husband be alive, the plaint is his, if he be dead the wife’s plaint is nothing.” “Rolls of Parliament,” vol. ii. p. 35, A.D. 1330.