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On the home court advantage. Participation of locals and non-residents in a village law court in sixteenth-century Holland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2014

JACO ZUIJDERDUIJN
JACO ZUIJDERDUIJN*
Affiliation:
Leiden University.
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Abstract

Rural law courts are sometimes believed to have contributed to juridical fragmentation, which led to coordination failures and, hence, to high transaction costs. We present a case study of the village law court of Mijnsheerenland, and pay particular attention to the question of whether non-residents expected villagers to have a ‘home court’ advantage. Our analysis of default risk premiums demanded by participants in various exchanges does not indicate this was the case. We argue that this was caused by one of the peculiarities of the juridical system of Holland, which was fragmented but nevertheless uniform because of the dominance of public courts under central control of the ruler.

De l'avantage d'une justice de proximité. les villageois et les horsins impliqués auprès d'un tribunal local, en hollande, au xvie siècle

On soupçonne parfois les tribunaux ruraux d'avoir contribué à la fragmentation de la pratique juridique, entraînant un manque de coordination et, par conséquent, des coûts de transaction élevés. Dans cet article, nous étudions le cas du tribunal du village de Mijnsheerenland et portons une attention toute particulière à la question de savoir si les horsins considéraient que les villageois bénéficiaient d'un avantage, du fait qu'ils avaient un tribunal à domicile. Notre analyse des indemnités demandées en cas de défaut de paiement, à diverses occasions, par les parties, dans les différentes affaires examinées, indique apparemment que ce n’était pas le cas. Nous y voyons une spécificité du système juridique de la Hollande, qui, quoique fragmenté, demeura néanmoins uniforme en raison de la prédominance de tribunaux publics restés sous le contrôle central de l'autorité souveraine.

Über den heimvorteil des gerichts vor ort. die partizipation von ortansässigen und auswärtigen in einem dorfgericht in holland im 16. jahrhundert

Es wird manchmal behauptet, ländliche Gerichte hätten zur juristischen Fragmentierung beigetragen, was wiederum zu gescheiterter Koordination damit zu hohen Transaktionskosten geführt habe. Unsere Fallstudie des dörflichen Gerichtshofs in Mijnsheerenland geht insbesondere der Frage nach, ob Leute von auswärts glaubten, dass Ortsansässige einen juristischen ‚Heimvorteil‘ besaßen. Unsere Analyse der Ausfallsrisikoprämien, die von den Vertragspartnern in unterschiedlichen Wechselgeschäften gefordert wurden, deutet jedoch darauf hin, dass dies nicht der Fall war. Wir behaupten, dass dies auf eine der Besonderheiten des Rechtssystems in Holland zurückzuführen ist, das einerseits fragmentiert war, andererseits aber dennoch einheitlich durch die Dominanz öffentlicher Gerichte, die der zentralen Kontrolle durch den Herrscher unterstanden.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 29 , Issue 1: SPECIAL ISSUE: LAW COURTS, CONTRACTS AND RURAL SOCIETY IN EUROPE 1200–1600. , May 2014 , pp. 19 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

ENDNOTES

1 ‘Rural law courts’ refers to all courts active in the countryside, both public (such as village law courts) and private (such as courts of landlords or manors). In contrast, ‘village law courts’ refers to the public courts of villages.

2 Epstein, S. R., ‘Introduction. Town and country in Europe, 1300–1800’, in Epstein, S. R. ed., Town and country in Europe, 1300–1800 (Cambridge, 2001), 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 15.

3 Epstein, S. R., Freedom and growth: the rise of states and markets in Europe, 1300–1750 (London, 2000), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This fragmentation was also heavily criticised by legal historians: Egmond, F., ‘Fragmentatie, rechtsverscheidenheid en rechtsongelijkheid’, in Faber, S. and Egmond, F. eds., Nieuw licht op oude justitie. Misdaad en straf ten tijde van de Republiek (Muiderberg, 1989), 9–23Google Scholar, here 9–10.

4 Brand, H., Over macht en overwicht. Stedelijke elites in Leiden (1420–1510) (Louvain and Apeldoorn, 1996), 267–71Google Scholar; though we have to keep in mind that urban magistrates were not only called to office because of their skills, but also because of their position in patronage networks. A. Nobel discusses problems that villages faced with respect to the limited number of people eligible for public administration: Nobel, A., Besturen op het Hollandse platteland. Cromstrijen 1550–1780 (Hilversum, 2012), 76–8Google Scholar.

5 De Blécourt noted several members of the law court of Kralingen who could hardly write: de Blécourt, A. S., Ambacht en gemeente: De regeering van een Hollandsch dorp gedurende de 17e, 18e en 19e eeuw (Zutphen, 1912), 17Google Scholar.

6 Corruption in late-medieval Holland is discussed in Zuijderduijn, C. J., Medieval capital markets. Markets for renten, state formation and private investment in Holland (1300–1550) (Leiden and Boston, 2009), 49–52Google Scholar.

7 Of course, this could also work the other way around: peasants may have been sceptical about the treatment they would receive in urban law courts. For Holland, Peter Hoppenbrouwers provides some evidence for urban law courts giving townsmen beneficial treatment at the expense of villagers: P. C. M. Hoppenbrouwers, ‘Town and country in Holland, 1300–1550’, in Epstein, Town and country in Europe, 54–79, here 74.

8 M. ‘t Hart, ‘Town and country in the Dutch Republic, 1550–1800’, in Epstein, Town and country in Europe, 80–105. According to Florike Egmond, in the early modern period more than 200 law courts in the province of Holland were competent to sentence in criminal cases, and with respect to civil cases their number was much larger: Egmond, ‘Fragmentatie, rechtsverscheidenheid en rechtsongelijkheid’, 9.

9 Nobel, Besturen op het Hollandse platteland, 30–1; Hoppenbrouwers, ‘Town and country in Holland’, 64–7.

10 Lesger, C. M., Hoorn als stedelijk knooppunt. Stedensystemen tijdens de late middeleeuwen en vroegmoderne tijd (Hilversum, 1990), 215Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 105–13.

12 Lesger looks at the distribution of notaries to gain an impression of the increasing services offered in villages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the number of notaries in the countryside increased markedly, and this seems to confirm that institutions dealing with property rights within villages improved over time: Ibid., 116–20.

13 The presence of weighing houses in villages in Holland is already visible in the late middle ages: Dijkman, J., Shaping medieval markets. The organisation of commodity markets in Holland, c. 1200–c. 1450 (Leiden and Boston, 2011), 131–50Google Scholar. Notaries first settled in villages in the course of the sixteenth century, however.

14 On sustained economic growth in Holland since the sixteenth century, see de Vries, J. and van der Woude, A., The first modern economy. Success, failure, and perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16 For a survey of the various markets connecting late medieval Holland's towns and villages, see van Bavel, B., Dijkman, J., Kuijpers, E. and Zuijderduijn, J., ‘The organisation of markets as a key factor in the rise of Holland from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. A test case for an institutional approach’, Continuity and Change 27 (2012), 347–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Raadschelders claims that local governments first took on judicial and police tasks in the early middle ages, political tasks in the high middle ages, and economic and social tasks in the late middle ages. They later created public utility companies in the nineteenth century and finally public welfare programmes in the twentieth century: Raadschelders, J. C. N., Plaatselijke bestuurlijke ontwikkelingen 1600–1980. Een historisch-bestuurskundig onderzoek in vier Noord-Hollandse gemeenten (The Hague, 1990), 56–62Google Scholar.

18 On the position of the nobility, see J. de Vries, ‘The transition to capitalism in a land without feudalism’, in Hoppenbrouwers and van Zanden, Peasants into farmers?, 67–84, here 75–6; de Vries and van der Woude, The first modern economy, 159–65; van Bavel, B., Manors and markets: economy and society in the Low Countries, 500–1600 (Oxford, 2010), 83–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van der Linden, H., ‘Het platteland in het noordwesten met nadruk op de occupatie circa 1000–1300’, in Jansen, H. P. H. and van Caenegem, R. C. eds., Algemene geschiedenis der Nederlanden 2 (Haarlem, 1982), 48–82Google Scholar, 73–8.

19 On the emergence of public bodies, see: Van der Linden, ‘Het platteland’, 73–8; Van Bavel, Manors and markets, 83–6; C. Van der Kieft, , ‘De stedelijke autonomie in het graafschap Holland gedurende de middeleeuwen’, Historisch Tijdschrift Holland 1 (1969), 98–104Google Scholar, 99; Mitteis, H., Rechtsfolgen des Leistungsverzugs beim Kaufvertrag nach niederlandischen Quellen des Mittelalters. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Handelsrechts (Heidelberg, 1913), 20–1Google Scholar. Elsewhere in the Low Countries, domanial courts continued to exist well into the late middle ages. See for instance Van Onacker's study into village market structures in the Campine region: van Onacker, E., ‘Bedrijvige boeren. Peasants en de land- en kredietmarkt in de vijftiende- en zestiende-eeuwse kempen’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 10 (2013), 40–70Google Scholar, here 44–5, 49.

20 Hoppenbrouwers, P. C. M., ‘Op zoek naar de “kerels”. De dorpsgemeente in de dagen van graaf Floris V’, in de Boer, D. E. H., Cordfunke, E. H. P. and Sarfatij, H. eds., Wi Florens… De Hollandse graaf Floris V in de samenleving van de dertiende eeuw (Utrecht, 1996), 224–42Google Scholar, here 225.

21 On the comital legal structure see Bailly, M. C. Le, Recht voor de raad. Rechtspraak voor het Hof van Holland, Zeeland en West-Friesland in het midden van de vijftiende eeuw (Hilversum, 2001), 36–42Google Scholar. On regional courts, see van den Arend, O., Zeven lokale baljuwschappen in Holland (Hilversum, 1993)Google Scholar.

22 Van der Linden, ‘Het platteland’, 78.

23 According to Van Gelder, there was sometimes even an ‘intimate relationship’ between lords and villagers; see van Nierop, H. F. K., Van ridders tot regenten. De Hollandse adel in de zestiende en de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw (The Hague, 1984), 157Google Scholar. Van Nierop and Nobel suggest relations were less strong: Ibid., 157–9; Nobel, Besturen op het Hollandse platteland, 51–5.

24 Van Nierop, Van ridders tot regenten, 119. In 1514 a few villages still paid some ‘feudal levies’, such as the villagers of Hof van Delft, who paid a tax on hofhuur and hoenderpacht. However, they did not pay these to lords, but to the count of Holland, who had managed to appropriate these taxes by then. Fruin, R. ed., Informacie up den staet faculteyt ende gelegentheyt van de steden ende dorpen van Hollant ende Vrieslant om daernae te reguleren de nyeuwe schiltaele gedaen in den jaere MDXIV (Leiden, 1866), 352–4Google Scholar. For a list of feudal levies still existing in 1514, see Naber, J. C., Een terugblik. Statistische bewerking van de resultaten van de Informatie van 1514 (Haarlem, 1970), 48–9Google Scholar.

25 Aten, D., “Als het gewelt comt…”. Politiek en economie in Holland benoorden het IJ, 1500–1800 (Hilversum, 1995), 277Google Scholar, 280.

26 Hoppenbrouwers, ‘Town and country in Holland’, 76; De Blécourt, Ambacht en gemeente, 19.

27 Hoppenbrouwers, ‘Town and country in Holland’, 73.

28 van Gelder, H. A. E., Nederlandse dorpen in de 16e eeuw (Amsterdam, 1953), 15Google Scholar.

29 Allan, A., Het Kennemer landrecht van 1274 tot het begin van de Republiek. Tekst van het handvest van 1292 met hertaling en toelichting (The Hague, 2005), 115Google Scholar, 167. See also van der Gouw, J. L., Het Ambacht Voorschoten (Voorburg, 1956), 29Google Scholar.

30 In the south of Holland these specialised colleges already existed before c. 1500; elsewhere, they emerged later. For instance, in the village of Voorschoten the azega was still evident in the second half of the sixteenth century: Van der Gouw, Het ambacht Voorschoten, 23; de Blécourt, A. S. and Fischer, H. F. W. D., Kort begrip van het oud-vaderlands burgerlijk recht (Groningen, 1959), 22Google Scholar.

31 Zuijderduijn, Medieval capital markets, 46–7.

32 De Blécourt, Ambacht en gemeente, 18–19.

33 Allan, Het Kennemer landrecht, 107–11. See also Le Bailly, Recht voor de Raad, 36–42.

34 Matthijssen, J., Het rechtsboek van Den Briel. Beschreven in vijf tractaten (The Hague, 1880), 115Google Scholar.

35 For examples of such problems outside of Holland, see Zuijderduijn, Medieval capital markets, 189–90.

36 van Mieris, F. ed., Handvesten, privilegien, octroyen, rechten, en vryheden, midsgaders ordonnantien, resolutien, plakkaaten, verbintenissen, costumen, instructien, en handelingen der stad Leyden (Leiden, 1759), 617Google Scholar.

37 That conflict resolution was a matter for local government agents was prescribed by the Kennemer landrecht (Allan, Het Kennemer landrecht, 228–9).

38 Zuijderduijn, Medieval capital markets, 184–99.

39 Ibid., 202–3.

40 Fruin, J. A. ed., De oudste rechten der stad Dordrecht en van het baljuwschap van Zuid-Holland II (The Hague, 1882), 291–331Google Scholar.

41 Fruin, De oudste rechten II, 253–4.

42 Ibid., 311–14. On the same procedure in the village of Ridderkerk, see Ibid., 288–90.

43 Ibid., 253–5, assuming that the panding involved two heemraden. In the sixteenth century a skilled labourer earned about 6 stivers a day.

44 The ‘St. Elisabeth’ flood occurred around 19 November 1421 and caused large parts of the south of Holland to become inundated. A survey of Mijnsheerenland's earliest history is provided by: Tresling, J. D., Rondom de Binnenmaas (Rotterdam, 1937), 149–55Google Scholar.

45 See van der Woude, A. M., Het Noorderkwartier. Een regionaal historisch onderzoek in de demografische en economische geschiedenis van westelijk Nederland van de late middeleeuwen tot het begin van de negentiende eeuw (Wageningen, 1972), 77–85Google Scholar. For this particular region, see Tresling, Rondom de Binnenmaas, 115–21.

46 Hoppenbrouwers, ‘Town and country in Holland’, 67–9.

47 Fruin, Informacie, 582–3.

48 These pounds were a unit of account used by the government of Holland to distribute taxes among towns and villages.

49 Helms van Eis, L. ed., ‘Register ende protocol van eijgen- ende rentebrieve van Moerkercken, ingaende anno XV c XXXII ende eindigende metten jare 1552’, Ons voorgeslacht. Maandblad van de vereniging ter bevordering van het stamboomonderzoek voor Rotterdam en omstreken 37 (1982), 97–123Google Scholar; Helms van Eis, L. ed., ‘Register en protocol van eijgen- ende rentebrieve van Moerkerken, ingaende anno XVc XXXII ende eindigende metten jare 1552’, Ons voorgeslacht. Maandblad van de vereniging ter bevordering van het stamboomonderzoek voor Rotterdam en omstreken 40 (1985), 143–55Google Scholar.

50 Nationaal Archief (Dutch National Archives; hereafter NA), 3.19.38, inv. nr. 25. The sheriff should be a welborene, which can be loosely translated as ‘upper-class’. For a more elaborate discussion of this social classification, see Janse, A., Ridderschap in Holland. Portret van een adellijke elite in de late middeleeuwen (Hilversum, 2001), 43Google Scholar.

51 NA, 3.19.38, inv. nr. 34.

52 NA, 3.19.38, inv. nrs. 26 and 34.

53 Practices with respect to the sale of real estate in this region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are discussed in Baars, C., De geschiedenis van de landbouw in de Beierlanden (Wageningen, 1973), 124–6Google Scholar.

54 NA, 3.03.08.104, inv. nr. 1, f. 1. Ic aert van gheel schout in moerkercken lant ende wij heemraderen inden selven ambochte voors. bij namen jacop jansz aert van driel ariaensz willem jansz ende jan jacopsz kennen dat voir ons gecomen is…

55 NA, 3.03.08.104, inv. nr. 1, f. 1. …kennen dat wij over de gifte vanden vijf morgen lants voorn gestaen hebben ende den eyghendom daerof vrij kennen…

56 NA, 3.03.08.104, inv. nr. 1, f. 4. …ende dit voers lant suffisant ende cloeck genoech voer dese neghen rinsche gulden tsiaers voers. …

57 NA, 3.03.08.104, inv. nr. 1, f. 3. …noch kennen wij schout ende heemraderen voors dit voernoemde lant vrij ende onbecommert van enigen renten…

58 This seems to have been practice in Voorschoten in the seventeenth century. The secretary of the village received a fee for ‘going through old contracts’ in the process of preparing a ratification (Van der Gouw, Het ambacht Voorschoten, 124).

59 Namely 1 lb. per heemraad that was involved in the sentence and the sheriff as much as all the heemraden together (Fruin, De oudste rechten II, 263).

60 NA, 3.03.08.104, inv. nr. 4 (register van willekeuren [register of ratifications]).

61 NA, 3.03.08.104, inv. nr. 4, f. 1v.

62 Based on the day wages of masons of the town of Dordrecht: Noordegraaf, L., Hollands welvaren? Levensstandaard in Holland 1450–1650 (Bergen, 1985), 74Google Scholar.

63 Sturm, B., “Wat ich schuldich war”. Privatkredit im frühneuzeitlichen Hannover (1550–1750) (Stuttgart, 2009), 195–9Google Scholar.

64 Zuijderduijn, Haarlem: J., ‘Conjunctuur in laatmiddeleeuws Haarlem. Schepenregisters als bron voor de economische ontwikkeling van een Hollandse stad’, Historisch Tijdschrift Holland 40 (2008), 3–17Google Scholar. van Zanden, Edam: J. L., Zuijderduijn, J. and de Moor, T., ‘Small is beautiful. On the efficiency of credit markets in late-medieval Holland’, European Review of Economic History 16, 1 (2012), 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 When expressed in annual number of transactions per 1,000 inhabitants, the law court of Mijnsheerenland was less active than those in towns such as Haarlem and Edam, but not to a great extent. See the data in Van Bochove, C., Deneweth, H. and Zuijderduijn, J., ‘Real estate and financial markets in England and the Low Countries, 1300–1800’, Centre for Global Economic History working paper 42 (2013), 24–5Google Scholar (http://www.cgeh.nl/real-estate-and-financial-markets-england-and-low-countries-1300-1800).

66 L. Helms van Eis ed., ‘Het register van Moerkercken resp. Mijnsheerenland (1559–1563)’ (available at www.hogenda.nl), 7.

67 Fruin, De oudste rechten II, 254–5. The fees included 0.25 stivers for the clerk for reading the complaint, and 4 stivers in the event that the court went on to confiscate the defendant's goods.

68 Other entries included complaints about the condition of streets, the winding up of inheritances, and disputes about tax assessments, etc.

69 Helms van Eis, ‘Het register’, 8.

70 Fruin, De oudste rechten II, 253.

71 For the concept of transaction costs, see North, D. C., Institutions, institutional change and economic performance (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 The average principal paid for 133 annuities between 1532–1553 was 164 guilders, which amounted to the wages of a skilled labourer for approximately 550 days’ work (see Noordegraaf's wage data for masons in sixteenth-century Dordrecht: Noordegraaf, Hollands welvaren?, 74).

73 van Kan, F. J. W., Sleutels tot de macht. De ontwikkeling van het Leidse patriciaat tot 1420 (Hilversum, 1988), 69–70Google Scholar; Brand, Over macht en overwicht, 217–21.

74 Aldermen, notaries and scribes are typical examples of people who, due to their profession, had a better idea of market developments than the population at large.

75 See in particular Craig Muldrew's work on the importance of reputation and social relations for access to non-collateralised loans: Muldrew, C., The economy of obligation. The culture of credit and social relations in early modern England (Basingstoke, 1998)Google Scholar.

76 James Tracy's data indicate that the majority of gemenelandsrenten ended up in the hands of townsmen, and that inhabitants of Dordrecht were important buyers in the mid-sixteenth century: Tracy, J. D., A financial revolution in the Habsburg Netherlands. Renten and renteniers in the county of Holland, 1515–1565 (Berkeley and London, 1985), 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Table 12.

77 See Van der Heijden's survey of public annuities sold by the town of Dordrecht between 1550 and 1650: van der Heijden, M., Geldschieters van de stad. Financiële relaties tussen stad, burgers en overheden 1550–1650 (Amsterdam, 2006), 280–90Google Scholar.

78 See the data in Van Bochove, Deneweth and Zuijderduijn, ‘Real estate and financial markets’, 24–5.

79 The rural population could invest in annuities sold by villages, and this happened frequently from the fifteenth century onwards. The supply of such annuities was, however, much lower in villages than in towns: Zuijderduijn, C. J., ‘Het lichaam van het dorp. Publieke schuld op het Hollandse platteland rond 1500’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis 5 (2008), 107–32Google Scholar.

80 Sheilagh Ogilvie has been a particular critic of the idea of the risk-averse peasant: Ogilvie, S., ‘The economic world of the Bohemian serf. Economic concepts, preferences, and constraints on the estate of Friedland, 1583–1692’, Economic History Review 54 (2001), 430–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A study of market participation in the small town of Edam, in Holland, in the sixteenth century, shows that lower and middling socio-economic groups display similar investment behaviour to that of the elite. We assume that differences in time-preference between townsmen and peasants were equally small. de Moor, T. and Zuijderduijn, J., ‘Preferences of the poor. Market participation and asset management of poor households in sixteenth-century Holland’, European Review of Economic History 17 (2013), 233–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Jessica Dijkman's analysis of market integration in late-medieval Holland clearly shows that wheat prices in two locations were closely linked. She also reports high correlation coefficients of prices in various towns in the southern Low Countries: Dijkman, Shaping medieval markets, 304–5. Charles Cornelisse arrives at a similar conclusion when he discusses the integration of prices for peat and firewood in late-medieval Holland: Cornelisse, C., Energiemarkten en energiehandel in Holland in de late middeleeuwen (Hilversum, 2008), 215–19Google Scholar.

82 For inflation, see Noordgraaf, L., Hollands welvaren?: Levensstandaard in Holland 1450–1650, 15–27Google Scholar. Many references to contemporaries complaining about ‘dear times’ are given in Fruin, Informacie, and also Noordegraaf, Hollands welvaren?, 28–41. Whether Dutch investors in later centuries took inflation into account is questioned by de Vries and van der Woude, The first modern economy, 146.

83 Gregory Clark, in his article on medieval rent charges, claims that ‘we can generally take the nominal rate of return to have been the anticipated real rate of return’; see Clark, G., ‘The cost of capital and medieval agricultural technique’, Explorations in Economic History 25 (1988), 265–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 268. We assume the same is true for annuities in sixteenth-century Holland.

84 We feel confident in this assumption because of the crucial importance of local landownership for an individual's social and political position within a village community.

85 This was also the conclusion of Egmond in a study into criminal law in early-modern Holland: Egmond, ‘Fragmentatie, rechtsverscheidenheid en rechtsongelijkheid’.