ABSTRACT
My essay will focus on the strange career of William Tyssinton, a clerk in the service of seneschal Thomas de Bray in the east midlands during the early 1290s. William makes several interesting appearances in the eyre rolls, the gaol delivery rolls and the patent rolls in connection with his pursuit of various escapees from the prison at Bridgenorth in Staffordshire. The records show Tyssinton, armed with a Danish axe, doggedly pursuing and capturing fugitives, an activity at which he seems to have excelled. The records also show that Tyssinton effectively navigated between favorable local procedures and royal law when he was himself presented before the eyre for homicide in 1293. He eventually secured a pardon from the king and an acquittal from local authorities.
Attention to Tyssinton’s activities will highlight a number of important issues that have recently come to the fore in medieval English legal history, and within which Paul Brand’s scholarship has played an important role. First, it will throw light upon recent debates about the interplay of royal and local law during the procedural reforms of the 1290s. Second, it will provide some insight into what the supposed centralization of English law in the late thirteenth century looked like on the ground from the perspective of a non-juridical actor. Lastly, it will highlight the strange career of a clerk who appears to have been exceptionally good with an axe.
