XIV. TIMES AND SEASONS, DAYS AND YEARS
(1) The Dating of Final Concords.
It was the practice to date final concords, (fn. 1) and this fact gives them
a great advantage over charters of feoffment, which, until the latter part
of the thirteenth century, were usually undated. Even then, the practice
of dating them was only gradually adopted. To ascertain their date we
have to depend upon the character of the hand-writing, on the occurrence of certain formulas, and on the evidence afforded by the names
of the parties and witnesses. Often, no more than an approximate date
can be deduced, and a final concord will frequently serve to confirm or
to modify a somewhat precarious conclusion and, not infrequently, to
give a fairly exact date.
(2) Return-days.
The return-days, which have already been referred to, (fn. 2) were the
days appointed for the return into court by the sheriff of original writs.
They were also called days in bench, or days in bank. When the court
sat at Westminster these days fell in one of the four law-terms, Hilary,
Easter, Trinity, or Michaelmas. In the time of Henry II no special days
seem to have been appointed as return-days, and we find concords dated
with reference to various feasts: St. Hilary, (fn. 3) St. Vincent, (fn. 4) St. Gregory, (fn. 5)
the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, (fn. 6) St. Peter and St. Paul, (fn. 7) St. Margaret, (fn. 8)
St. Denis, (fn. 9) St. Luke, (fn. 10) St. Martin, (fn. 11) St. Nicholas. (fn. 12) The same practice
prevailed under Richard I. In the time of John there was a tendency
to fix return-days with reference to a few feasts: St. Hilary, Easter,
Trinity, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Michaelmas, and Martinmas.
To these the Purification of the blessed Virgin and Ascension Day were
added in the early years of Henry III; and the return-days generally
occurred about once a week during term. From 1245 to 1272, the period
with which this volume is specially concerned, it had become the almost
invariable rule, when the court sat at Westminster, to use the return-days
which were appointed by a statute (fn. 13) which is usually assigned to the
fifty-first year of Henry III, and which no doubt crystallised the existing
practice, namely:
Hilary Term
Octave of Hilary
Quindene of Hilary
Morrow of the Purification
Octave of the Purification
Trinity Term
Octave of Trinity
Quindene of Trinity
Morrow of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Quindene of the same feast
Easter Term
Octave of Easter
Quindene of Easter
Three weeks from Easter
One month from Easter
Five weeks from Easter
or Morrow of the Ascension
Michaelmas Term
Octave of St. Michael
Quindene of St. Michael
Three weeks from St. Michael
One month from St. Michael
Morrow of All Souls
Morrow of St. Martin
Quindene of St. Martin
By these days the business of the court was dated. Thus the octave
of St. Hilary served as the date for transactions from the 20th to the 26th
of January; and one month from Easter for transactions from the fourth
Sunday after Easter to the following Saturday; or in other words each
return-day served as the date of proceedings in court until the next
return-day, or the end of term, as the case might be. When Easter fell
early and lengthened the period between Trinity Sunday and the Nativity
of the Baptist, we meet with a return-day three weeks from Trinity. (fn. 14)
Such was the practice at Westminster. In the country, however,
when final concords were to be levied before the justices in eyre, it would
have been inconvenient always to confine the proceedings to the usual
return-days, and the practice was to make the writs returnable 'at the
coming of the justices into those parts.' Since the justices in eyre often
sat in vacation, the dates of some of the concords are out of term-time,
as for instance, three weeks, or one month from the Purification of the
blessed Virgin, three weeks from the Nativity of the Baptist, three weeks
or a month from St. Martin. (fn. 15)
The expressions in the text, 'in eight days of Easter,' 'from Easter
in fifteen days,' 'in one month of Easter,' etc., have been taken from the
final concords of the Commonwealth period, when English was used
instead of Latin; and these were presumably the forms in which men
thought and spoke, although they had previously written in Latin, and
after the Restoration were to write in Latin again.
The parties summoned to appear in court were allowed three days'
grace reckoned from the return-day specified in the writ, and they were
not adjudged contumacious on the ground of non-appearance until the
fourth day. With reference to these days of grace, Blackstone remarks
that 'our sturdy ancestors held it beneath the condition of a freeman
to appear, or do any other act, at the precise time appointed.' (fn. 16) English
villages are in many respects notoriously conservative, and one may
speculate whether the frequent unwillingness of their present inhabitants
to appear until long past the hour appointed for a meeting may not
perchance be a survival of the characteristic that Blackstone noticed in
their sturdy ancestors.
(3) Modern equivalents of ancient dates.
For the convenience of the reader the modern equivalents of the
ancient forms of date have been given, for it is not every one who would
be prepared to give out of hand the date of Easter in the twenty-ninth
year of Henry III, or to state the day, month, and year of the Friday
after the feast of St. Denis, 27 Henry II.
(4) Interesting methods of dating documents.
The final concords afford some instances of interesting methods of
dating documents by important events, a practice which is characteristic
of the twelfth century, though it survived into the reign of Henry III:
Friday, the first feast of St. Gregory after the lord Henry II first received the
allegiance of the Scots at York. (fn. 17)
The morrow of St. Martin next after the agreement made between Pope
Alexander III and the Emperor of Germany. (fn. 18)
A similar instance may be quoted from a roll of the Curia Regis of
the year 1194:
The king, the grandfather [of Henry II], gave that land to Wigain . . .
on the day that he crossed the sea to go into Normandy in that year in which was
born his grandson, Henry son of the Empress Maud. (fn. 19)
and from a charter of William Rufus preserved in the Registrum
Antiquissimum (fn. 20) of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln:
This gift was made on the morrow of the day on which archbishop Anselm
was made my lawful man (meus ligius homo factus cst). (fn. 21)
and from a volume of facsimiles and copies of charters, made in 1641–2,
and now in the possession of the Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham:
die quo Dux Saxon' desponsauit filiam Henrici Regis Anglie. (fn. 22)
(5) Terms of payment.
Rents were generally payable at one, two, or four times in the year;
and the usual terms were Easter, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist,
Michaelmas, and Christmas. Sometimes other terms are found, as the
Assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary, (fn. 23) 15 August, and the feast of the
popular Lincolnshire saint, Botulph. (fn. 24)