From England to France: Felony and Exile in the High Middle Ages by William Chester Jordan (review)

Using more than 2000 recorded cases of abjuration from England and adding comparative examples from the Continent, William Chester Jordan brings to life the 700-year-old ghosts of those who were subject to the practice of forcible deportation by the judicial authorities. Medieval justice was physically and emotionally harsh. Public execution and deliberately stomach-churning acts of mutilation (often in concert with one another) were the stock responses of the law to felony. Allowing a person to live because he or she had made it to sanctuary, confessed to his or her crime, and made an oath to abjure the realm was, therefore, an act of mercy, albeit a “fearsome” form of mercy. Exile was no easy option. Barefoot, bareheaded, and carrying the penitent’s cross, the abjurer had to make her or his way to a port of embarkation at rapid pace; then she or he was forced to stand in the sea and appeal for passage to the Continent. Once in the port of Wissant (the first destination of most of Jordan’s abjurers), the exile had to find a way of creating a new life for herself or himself. Most, it seems, probably failed to do so and found their end in the large cemetery that abutted the town. A few succeeded, and even fewer managed to make a return to their homeland. The consequence of returning to one’s homeland without permission could be catastrophic. A woman who returned to Paris after exile was buried alive beneath the gallows of the bailiwick of St-Maur-des-Fosses, an act that was done in full view of the public pour encourager les autres.

This book makes for painful reading, and the passage of time has not lessened the impact of the tragic stories used by Jordan to explore his topic. We meet, for example, Alice de la Venele who was persecuted by, among others, the bailiff of Bury St. Edmunds who had designs on her property. Her fiancé was driven into exile, and then so was she. Despite appealing to King Edward I for redress, she seems to have lived out the remainder of her life a stranger in a foreign land.

There is some relief from the litany of a multitude of tragic lives unveiled. The chaplain William of Bugbrooke, for example, who thought that he had been caught fornicating with another man’s wife, first hid in a chest and then made his escape to sanctuary where he confessed his crime only to discover that the woman’s husband had no notion that the chaplain had been having carnal knowledge of his wife. He did now. William invented a story of how he had stolen 8 shillings so that he could go into voluntary exile. Better that than meet the fury of the cuckolded husband. History does not recall how the wife fared.

It is Jordan’s command of the English and the continental evidence that makes this such an impressive piece of work. One might carp at his use of his “historical imagination” to reconstruct some probable historical events, but since he is such a consummate historian, it would be foolish to so do. His best guess is better than the best guesses of most scholars. It is refreshing to see the method employed so well. Jordan writes elegantly and engagingly, too. One is never lost. He talks to his readers in an intimate style and guides them through the subject with real skill. This book should be required corrective reading for all those who would subscribe to the “Merrie England” school of history. It will bring that reader up short.