ABSTRACT
Medieval justice suffered from these two interlocking defects: the ability of noblemen to commit crimes with impunity, and the extortion/bribery of judges. The social power of the nobility and the attachment to it of judges were but two of the complaints that historians have directed against late medieval justice. A major reason that noblemen were not prosecuted was their social power over the levers of the judicial system. This chapter examines the various revisionist approaches that help us to understand them in a new way. In 1355 and again in 1376 it was alleged in Parliament that sheriffs and gaolers were getting themselves appointed to judicial commissions in order to indict and imprison innocent people who could then be induced to offer bribes for their release. Recently, some historians have tried to put some anthropological or sociological distance between modern morality and medieval 'corruption', seeing rather the positive functions of gift-giving.
