goods; with levying fines at will on bakers, brewers, butchers, tanners, and others ; of making encroachments (perpresturas) on the king's highways at Cuckfield, Balcombe, Worth, Barcombe, and other places; of exacting 100s. from every military fief in his barony, to inclose the town of Lewes with a stone wall without warrant; that his bailiffs had broken down the "vivarium" of Richard de Pleyz after his death, and had destroyed his wood at Werplesbum in the hundred of Street; that the inclosed parks claimed by him at Ditchling, Cuckfield, and Worth, were so strictly watched that even the Sheriff Mathew de Hasting's horse, which he had sent to be shod at Ditchling, had been stopped by Walter the park-keeper with his men, when the groom was beaten, wounded, and robbed by them. These and sundry other complaints the earl was summoned to answer in open court, a few years later, in 1279, before John de Reygate and other justices at Guildford. It is most probable that his behaviour on this occasion gave rise to the current anecdote of the earl having produced his best title from his scabbard.
Whether the incident occurred or not, he did not, however, refuse to answer; but boldly and frankly avowed all imputed to him, as appertaining to his feudal rights, "by the same warrant as all his ancestors had held them from time immemorial, and that neither he or his ancestors had ever incroached upon or usurped the king's rights." The jury, formed on his demand to inquire into the truth of this assertion, returned for their verdict that it was true, and the earl was honourably dismissed from all suit (eat sine die),[1]
It would appear, therefore, that the grievances and oppressions complained of by the Hundreds were legally justified by the comprehensive grasp of feudal jurisdiction.
What occasioned the dispute referred to in the following letter of the Earl of Warwick (whose mother was third in descent from a daughter of the second Earl de Warenne) does not appear. As Reginald Grey de Wilton, the justice in Chester, was concerned in it, it probably related to the earl's lands in North Wales. During the king's absence in France, the Earl of Cornwall marched into Wales, and there destroyed Droselan Castle, and, as the king's lieutenant, he had strictly
- ↑ Placita quo Warr., 70 Edw. I, 751.
