Conspiracy in the Middle Ages
| Autor | Víctor Saucedo |
| Páginas | 77-141 |
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The coming into being of the offence of conspiracy cannot be separated from the festering problem of judicial corruption that Edward I had inherited from Henry III.1As for the seriousness of the problem, sufice to say as an illustration how a commission appointed after Edward I’s absence between 1286 and 1289, revealed that a majority of the justices of the King’s Bench and the Common Pleas had been involved in crimes, some of them as serious as tampering with evidence, forfeiting ofices, forgery of documents, or even murder. It comes as no surprise that people at the time sang that “sunt justiciarii, quos favor et denarii alliciunt a jure.”2The genesis of the offence of conspiracy through the statutes 20 Edw 1, 28 Edw 1 c 10, and 33 Edw 1 is connected to contemporary legislation concerning this problem of judicial corruption. Not only were the same terms used to describe these contemporary abuses employed in the former statutes, but most importantly, the conceptual frame to which all of them refer to is the same.
The concept of a bribe—some form of payment or another reward that a ju-dicial oficer takes in exchange for some advantage he might give in any business in which this oficer is involved—appears in the Statute of Westminster I 1275 (3 Edw 1 c 26). Namely, in this statute’s preemptive measures that “no Sheriff, nor other the King’s Oficer, take any Reward to do his Ofice, but shall be paid of that which they take of the King.”3Likewise, bailiffs of sheriffs have
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to swear that they will not fail to do right “for any love, hatred, fear, reward, or promise, and that they will [not] conceal the secrets.”4However, it seems that the most frequent form of bribery was an arrangement to have a share in the chose in action. In this sense, the statute provides that “No Oficer of the King by themselves, nor by other, shall maintain Pleas, Suits, or Matters hanging in the King’s Court, for Land, Tenements, or other Things, for to have part or proit thereof by Covenant made between them.”5In this statute, we have three more elements: a pending plea from which it follows that one of the parties to the agreement is bringing it, the oficer, and a formal agreement to share in the thing. This agreement is the bribery or corruption itself. The unlawful conduct that the oficer is expected to perform with regard to some legal business to beneit or advance the interests of the party bribing is referred to with the rath-er general and opaque term maintain. The same term appears in c 28 of the statute dealing with sheriffs and court clerks: “q[e] nul Clerk de Justice ne de Visconte ne meintege parties en quereles, ne bosoignes q[e] sont en la Court le Rey.”6According to Britton, the articles of the inquest have to question juries “concerning sheriffs… that have maintained suits or the parties to actions, and have procured false inquests, whereby justice has been hindered.”7The agreement to have a share in the thing irst appears labeled with the term champerty in the Statute Westminster II 1285 (13 Edw 1 c 49), in the context of the great judicial scandal, which deals with the things in action that the high judiciary is not supposed to take as reward or bargain:
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THE Chancellor, Treasurer, Justices, nor any of the King’s Council, no Clerk of the Chancery, nor of the Exchequer, nor of any Justice or other Oficer, nor any of the King’s House, Clerk ne Lay, shall not receive any Church, nor Advowson of a Church, Land, nor Tenement in Fee, by Gift, nor by Purchase, nor to Farm, nor by Champerty, nor otherwise, so long as the Thing is in Plea before Us, or before any of our Oficers ; nor shall take no Reward thereof And he that doth {contrary to this Act} either himself, or by another, or make any {Bargain,} shall be punished at the King’s Pleasure, as well he that purchaseth, as he that doth sell.8Similarly, Britton makes the taking of a chose in action an article of inquest:
Also concerning our oficers who have maintained any wrong, or have accepted the presentment to any church, of which the advowson was in litigation in our Court, and let such be punished according to the statutes; or who have maintained any plea by champerty or in any other manner; and whether they have hindered justice in any point; and of the fees which they take, and of whom, secretly or openly.9
Another idea that is formulated in these statutes is the giving to and taking of bribes by jurors who are to perjure themselves returning false verdicts. The term conspiracy was irst used to refer to the corruption of jurors in the writ that was issued in 1279 by Edward I to his justices in Eyre, giving them the following instructions by which one more article was added to the Eyre of 1278:
Dominus Rex mandavit Iusticiariis suis itinerantibus in diversis comitatibus breve suum in hoc verba. Edwardus dei gratia etc. Iusticiariis suis itinerantibus in com’ Kant’
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salutem. Quia datum est nobis intellegi quod quidam maliciosi homines de pluribus comitatibus regni nostri propter incrementum utilitatis proprie proniores ad malum quam ad bonum quasdam detestabiles confederationes et malas cogitationes, prestitis mutuo sacramentis, ad amicorum et benivolorum suorum partes in placitis et loquelis ipsos contingentibus[,] in comitatibus illis utpote in assisis, iuratis et recognitionibus fallaciter manutenendas et defendendas, et ad inimicos suos fraudulenter grauandos, et in quantum in ipsis est plerumque exheredendos, inter se facere presumpserunt, et nos consider-antes grauibus periculis et dampnis innumeris que tam nobis quam ceteris de regno nostro ex huiusmodi hominum malicia provenire possent, in futurum eorundem insolentiam congruis remediis reprimere volentes, vobis mandamus quod in singulis comitatibus in quibus vos itinerare contigerit ista vice de huiusmodi confederatoribus et conspiratoribus quanto diligentius poteritis inquiratur. Et si quos inde culpabiles inveneritis sine dilatione capi et in prisona nostra salvos custodiri faciatis, donec aliud inde preceperimus; et hoc nullatenus omittatis.10The form of corruption this writ is trying to tackle is an agreement between jurors and possibly other parties (utpote in assisis, iuratis et recognitionibus) to support litigants in pleas (partes in placitis et loquelis), by perjuring themselves (fallaciter) in deception of court (fraudulenter) to disturb private right (in ipsis est plerumque exheredandos) for some reward (propter incrementum utilitatis proprie).
This writ that was issued in 1279 would later become the model for the article of the eyre De mutuis sacramentis added to the chapters of the eyre since then as the Novum capitulum per breve Regis. The same article De mutuis sacramentis is sometimes annexed to the Vetera Capitula, and sometimes to the Nova Capitula Itineris.11The stereotyped versions added to each of these articles varied slightly. In the Vetera Capitula, inquest is to be made “of those who by Oaths bind themselves to support or defend the Parties, Quarrels and Businesses of their Friends and well-wishers, whereby Truth and Justice are stiled.”12In the Nova Capitula, it is to be made “of those who bind themselves by mutual Oaths, unjustly or justly to defend fraudulently Parts of Pleas or Suits affecting their Friends or Well-wishers, as in Assis-
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es, Juries, Recognizances, whereby they cannot be convicted in such Pleas or Suits according to the Truth.”13
Compared to the language of the writ of 1279, in these versions of De mutuis sacramentis, there is no direct reference to bribes, although it is implied. By contrast, in Britton’s paraphrase an extended version of the articles of the Eyre, corruption appears along with intimidation. In this rendition, corruption of jurors is of the essence of the offense:
Let it be also inquired concerning confederacies between the jurors and any of our oficers, or between one neighbour and another, to the hinderance of justice; and what persons of the county procure themselves to be put upon inquests and juries, and who are ready to perjure themselves for hire or through fear of any one and let such persons.14As this passage reveals, the corruption of juries could happen at a collective level as indicated in the articles of inquest or, perhaps more frequently, at the level of single jurors perjuring for hire.15An illustration of how individual who suborned jurors could operate appears in the description of the ground upon which jurors in the criminal procedure could be challenged:
We will also, that if any man, who is indicted of a crime touching life and limb, and perceives that the verdict of the inquest, on which he has put himself, is likely to pass against him, desires to say that any one of the jurors is suborned to condemn him by the lord, of whom the accused holds his...
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