406 THE FORGERY OF FINES July bench, the first charged with placing a forged fine on a file of fines in the (treasury of the) receipt of the exchequer at West- minster and the other with being an accessory thereto.^ The story elicited by the court was a curious one. Kernetby alleged that he had a claim to certain manors in Northumberland as one of the heirs under a fine which he asserted actually had been levied and which he hoped to find in the treasury.^ Whether or not he believed a fine to exist which supported his claim, he deemed it desirable to manufacture evidence, and accordingly some time about the octave of Michaelmas (6 October) he approached Henry de Coppedale in St. Paul's with the proposal that the latter should arrange for a document imitating a fine to be forged in the terms of a draft which he there produced. Coppedale 's reward was to be twenty marks, and Kernetby, who apparently lodged in the archbishop of York's house at Westminster, took him to his chamber there and gave him forty shillings as earnest money. Then, according to the statement which he made in court, Coppedale proceeded to get the actual forgery fabricated by a certain public scrivener (communis scriptor) in London whose name he did not know. Afterwards, on 27 October, Coppedale abstracted from the (treasury of the) receipt the files of fines for (unless there is an error in the record) the thirty- second year of Edward I,^ took them to his inn in London and there threaded on the forgery, subsequently, it is to be presumed, replacing the files. This step having been accomplished, Kernetby apparently desired to obtain an exemplification of the forgery,* and presented himself at the receipt of the exchequer with a writ of certiorari addressed to the treasurer and chamberlains directing them to transmit to the chancery a transcript of the (forged) fine.^ He demanded that this should be done at once, but the plot had been discovered and he found himself arrested by a serjeant-at-arms, by order of the council, and taken to the
- The record of this case is document no. iii a, printed below. A brief note of it
is given in Agarde's Indexes, vol. 36, pt. ii, fo. 30 d., but the case does not appear to have been otherwise remarked.
- For the tangled family history which explains Kemetby's motive see Craster,
Hist, of Northumberland, x. 392 f. ; Cal. Inq. Post Mort. iii. 394, viii. 448 ; Inq. Post. Mort., Edw. Ill, 166/19, Ric. II, 46/24 ; Feet of Fines, 181/11, nos. 3 and 8.
- Why he should abstract the files for the wrong year, or at all events place thereon
a forgery purporting to be of a date eleven years earlier, it is impossible to understand ; and that this was the fact is almost impossible to believe, for unless the forgery was in its right place it was effectually buried. A predecessor in crime had blundered in this way, but the court specially noted the fact, infra, pp. 410, 415.
- This step was prudent and usual. Compare the caise of William de Houghton
(below, pp. 410, 413) and that of the abbot of Bruem, who procured the confirmation of a falsified charter of Richard I {Cal. Close Rolls, Edw. Ill, xii. 492-3 ; Pike, History of Crime, i. 275). ' Although not specifically stated, this was clearly the procedure followed. For the form of writ see Registrvm Omnium Brevium (1531), fo. 169.
