410 THE FORGERY OF FINES July deeds or notes before him he set himself to fabricate a document which finally resolved itself into a grotesque medley of his originals, but which he was apparently quite satisfied would pass as a foot of a fine, although he did not even trouble to indent it.^ The most difficult part of his scheme was, however, before him, for he had to obtain an official transcript of his forgery, and to do this he had to introduce it into a file in the treasury. The writ was doubtless obtained as a matter of routine on payment of the fee,^ and armed with this Houghton presented himself to the chamberlains and contrived to assist in searching for the fine. In the treasury he found an opportunity to file the forgery, but chose for his purpose a file of a later year than that he had hit upon for the date of his fabrication.^ The fraud was almost immediately discovered * and Houghton imder examination made a clean breast of it. Coppedale appears to have profited a little from his predecessors' mistakes, although his ingenuity was not adequate for success. His case and that of Houghton's will, however, serve to illustrate the reason for the statute of 1404 * passed at the instance of the commons, who alleged that many feet of fines had been abstracted from the treasury and notes of fines from the court of common pleas, and counterfeits put in their place.* The case of the prior of Coventry as well as the two later cases illustrate the curious position which forgery occupied in medieval criminal law. In 1272 the prior is pardoned after his deception has failed him in the courts ; in 1369 and 1376 the court is apparently puzzled to know what sentence to pass on the culprits,
- The forgery is still sewn to the Coram Rege Roll. The hand is a little more
plausible than in Coppedale's case, although a poor enough attempt.
- Cf. p. 406, n. 5, above.
- From the rather vague indication in the record that the forgery was filed ' among
the files of fines between the twelfth year and the thirty-fifth year ', it would seem that while the officers of the exchequer were engaged in searching in one chest or press (where the files for the sixth year were kept), Houghton was engaged on another. The ' Area Cyrographorum ad Scaccarium Londonie ' is mentioned in a case before the king's bench in 1241 (Curia Regis Roll, no. 121, m. 35 (2 ; Abbreviatio Placitorum, p. 115).
- This is clear from the entry on the Controlment RoU (no. 24, m. 19 (2) : ' Et iidem
Ministri . . . dicunt quod predicta cedula non fuit in ligula predicta die Sabbati vltimo preterite' » 5 Hen. IV, c. 14.
- Rot. Pari. iii. 543 : ' . . . pluseurs Pies des Fjms des Terres et Tenementz deinz
vostre Roialme d'Engleterre, demurrantz en vostre Tresorie, et les Notes de tieles Fyns demurrantz en vostte Commune Bank, aient este devant ces heures enbesilez, et autres Pies et Notes des Fyns fauxement controevez et mys en lour lieux par deceit et conjectement d'aucuns.' Whether this statement was literally true may be open to question, but it is not impossible : the medieval civil servant was far from incorruptible ; see p. 41 1, n. 4, as to forgery by a chancery clerk. For a later instance of tampering with records by an exchequer clerk see the case in the Star Chamber (1433) printed by Baldwin, Select Cases, 97 ff. The fraudulent clerk is dismissed and excluded from any court of record, but not otherwise punished.
