Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 2, Page 336

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Volume 2, Page 336

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[001] consigned to gaol, nor is he to be released by pledges or by bail¹ without special
[002] instructions from the lord king, any more than if he had committed homicide.²
[003] [If he is willing to appear voluntarily without distraint and to answer freely he
[004] ought to depart freely, until judgment has fallen upon him.] When both appear,
[005] the accuser as well as the accused, ³let the accuser put forward his appeal in this
[006] way: he ought to say that he was present and a witness at a certain place on a
[007] certain day and hour and knew that the accused had plotted the death of the
[008] king, or his betrayal, or that of his army, or had assented or given counsel or aid
[009] or lent authority thereto. If he is ready to prove this as the court may award and
[010] the accused denies the charge completely,⁴ the appeal is usually decided by the
[011] duel, nor will it be possible for them to compromise the matter except with the
[012] king's consent.⁵ ⁶ The accused may answer and avoid the appeal before the duel
[013] is waged. He may allege (after he has denied the felony and the betrayal of the
[014] lord king and everything else imputed to him) and pray ⁷that it be allowed on his
[015] behalf that the appellor is a self-confessed thief and a thief arrested and imprisoned
[016] for theft and that he broke prison and escaped from prison,⁸ or that he was outlawed,
[017] so that nothing further remains save the execution of judgment.⁹ He may also
[018] pray that it be allowed on his behalf that though the appellor alleges that there were
[019] several others with him when the plot was made, ¹⁰such persons never met together
[020] at any time, by day or night;¹¹ [or] that though the appellor was brought before
[021] the justices for another offence on another occasion, after the day on which the
[022] said plot and treason were supposed to be committed, he said nothing of any such
[023] betrayal of the lord king;¹² [or] that since the appellor knew that the said treason
[024] had been plotted and did not go at once and without delay to the king to disclose
[025] it to him, but kept silent about it for so long a time that peril, if such there were,
[026] might in the meanwhile have befallen the king, that he therefore ought not to be
[027] heard in his appeal, as the king's enemy and betrayer and as one consenting to
[028] the felony; [or] that though this was said to have been done at such a time, and
[029] the appellor has since frequently been in the lord king's court and has often spoken
[030] with the king, or could have spoken with him had he so wished, he made no
[031] mention of it;¹³ [or] that

Notes

1. ‘ballium’

2. Infra 343, 345, 347, iv, 363, 377

3-5. Glanvill, xiv, 1: infra v

4. ‘per omnia’, as Gl.; supra 254, line 3

6. A good part of what follows is from C.R.R. xii, no. 1055 (Mich. 9/10 Henry III) cited infra 397 in an addicio. Above the entry on the roll is written ‘De felonia et placitis corone.’ Not in B.N.B.

7-8. Ibid.: ‘et petit judicium si debeat eidem Ricardo inde respondere, desicut ipse captus est pro latrociniis et roberiis et per indictamentum captus fuit et imprisonatus apud Oxoniam et fregit gaolam et evasit’

9. Infra 429, 433

10-11. Ibid.: ‘et quod ipse et Radulfus de Bray et predictus Willelmus filius Elie nunquam fuerunt socii nec etiam insimul fuerunt per unum diem vel per unum noctem.’

12. Ibid.: ‘Petit etiam sibi allocari quod tunc ductus fuit coram justiciariis apud Bedeford ... et nichil locutus fuit de tanta seditione.’

13. Ibid.: ‘Et requisitus quare non ostendebat hoc domino rege vel alicui de suis, dixit quod non potuit pro prisona . . Et quia predictus Ricardus predictam feloniam regi non ostendit, cum ... maximam deliberacionem loqui posset cum domino rege, et quia fregit gaolam, consideratum est quod nullum est appellum suum et quod detrahatur et suspendatur.’