Jonathan Rose, Maintenance in Medieval England

Medieval and early modern English legal history has started to reap the benefits of the wonderful ‘Anglo-American Legal Tradition’ project of digitizing the plea rolls of the central common-law courts. Jonathan Rose’s exhaustive research shows what can be achieved by working one’s way systematically through these records covering a long time span. At the core of this book is a study of actions for maintenance and cognate offences (such as champerty and conspiracy) brought in the courts of Common Pleas and King’s Bench between 1272 and 1485. In all, Professor Rose has found around 2000 cases: a significant, and substantially new, body of evidence through which to interpret his subject. That, upon reaching the end of the book, the reader may remain uncertain about how to conceive of maintenance is not the author’s fault; rather, it reflects haziness and double-think on the part of contemporaries. As Rose explains, maintenance emerged as a corollary of that universal medieval value: lordship. In its loosest, non-legal sense, maintenance entailed support. In so litigious a society, such support would on occasion mean help in lawsuits. Legal assistance readily tipped over into (what could be presented as) improper involvement in someone else’s dispute. Such abuse – especially when reinforced by advantages of power, wealth, or brute strength – could deny justice. Maintenance therefore was closely linked to the phenomenon once called ‘bastard feudalism’. Anxiety about maintenance abounded in complaint literature, encompassing parliamentary petitions, sermons, poems, and plays. Expecting support in one’s actions, no matter their unjustness, incentivized spurious litigation: suing for pleasure, profit, or spite.

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