‘Et Subridet etc.’: smiles, laughter and levity in the medieval Year Books

In W v Robert, a debt case of 1440 in the Court of Common Pleas, argument reportedly turned on the correct county from which a jury should be drawn, when some of the relevant action had taken place in one county and some in another. Paston JCP pronounced that it would be appropriate to draw the jury from both counties, after which it is noted in the Year Book report that he smiled or laughed (et subridet etc.). These few words raise obvious questions. In particular, we might ask whether the judge did in fact laugh (or smile), why he might have done so and why the reporter has told us that he did.

Numerous instances of levity have been discovered by earlier scholars, noting laughter, smiles, wordplay, whimsy and jokes (with special emphasis on the often grumpy humour of Bereford CJ), but these have yet to be considered together. This paper will examine examples of levity or humour drawn from Year Books from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, attempting to draw conclusions as to why they were included in the reports and why such levity might have occurred in the medieval court room. It will acknowledge the challenges presented by the Year Book manuscripts and the identification of humour, but will argue that the content of such levity as can be identified and the fact of its inclusion in Year Books can be used to provide some new perspectives on the world of the medieval common lawyers, the functions of these important manuscripts in their own time and the idea of the medieval common law which has been preserved amongst the legal profession.