Short Stuff: Outlawry

A request by our producer Dave C, we explore how totally on your own you were in Medieval England when the court declared you an outlaw. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave. And this is a very special short stuff Chuck, because Dave requested this topic so long ago that I don't even remember when he did.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, every once in a while, a colleague will drum up the nerve to approach us very sheepishly with head bowed, say, what do you guys think about this idea? And Josh will wave them away and say, it shall be on the list in seven years' time.

• 1:15Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Or so.

• 1:18Josh Clark?

  Right, give or take seven more years.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  We shall do outlawry.

• 1:23Josh Clark?

  And we are finally, so this one's for you, Dave. And it's a good idea too, because most people think of outlaws as a specific, you know, like.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Like Johnny Cash.

• 1:36Josh Clark?

  Yes, exactly. A lot of people think of Johnny Cash when they think outlaw, don't they?

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, outlaw country music, it's a thing.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  But this turns out to have been an actual legal.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Standing?

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  Yes, that could be applied to people that was not a pleasant thing to have applied to you. And it basically meant that, buddy, you're on your own.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  It was, it was applied at least in a lot of cases to fugitives. But like, we think of fugitives today as like, people who the US Marshal Service goes and gets. Like, we talked about in Operation Flagship. That, that kind of falls under the same rubric, but this was a fugitive in that like, they were summoned to court. They decided not to come to court. And after a certain procedure, they were declared outlaws. And that, that meant like, the law no longer applies to them. All the protections that are afforded to you are gone. And it does seem a little harsh, I have to say, for just failing to appear in court.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a long time ago, though, so who knows what was going on back then?

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Uh, mainly medieval England is what we're talking about. But the earliest kind of this outlaw status became a law in 6th century Frankish law called the lex salica.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  This was under King Clovis, uh, early 500s. So this is a long, long time ago. And this was basically like, yeah, if you don't respond to a summons, um, then you're outside of the king's protection. This kind of started the legal basis for that. But medieval England is where it's sort of most known. If you were over the age of 14 and you were a man, if you were a woman, you were said to be waived, even though that it was basically the same thing.

• 3:18Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  But if you were over 14 and you were a male, you could be outlawed. And basically, say like, like you said, like, hey, um, anything you do, uh, or anything anyone does to you, rather, like, we're not even going to prosecute them. Somebody could break into your house and steal your stuff and you're an outlaw, so sorry, TS for you.

• 3:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so like, today, our conception of outlaw, our modern conception, like, say, applying to Johnny Cash, like you said, or Jesse James, or even Robin Hood.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  They're not types to show up to a legal summons. So they definitely do kind of fall into that same category. But we kind of have it backwards in that we, we think of those people as like they chose a life of crime outside the law, right? They're outlaws. But in reality, with outlawry, the, the, the law itself has withdrawn itself from you and left you outside the law. Kind of in a really catty turn, the law is like, oh, you don't recognize my jurisdiction over you. You're not going to come to court when we ask you to? Well, then, fine. I guess you don't need my protections anymore either. Hence, you're an outlaw.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Exactly. And you mentioned a process. There was a process. It wasn't immediate. It was a pretty slow process even. But what would happen is the sheriff of wherever you were would locate these fugitives. They would do some investigating, see if they owned any property that they could get to basically say like, hey, we've got your, you know, your stash of chickens. Come to court and maybe you'll get those chickens back. If that never happens and they can't get them to come to court or whatever, then the sheriff has to sit through this five different times in court, calling, you know, the fugitive to come forward. And after the fifth non-appearance, then they hit the gavel or dropped the glove or

• 5:17Speaker 02

  whatever the heck they did back then and said, you, sir, are an outlaw.

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And it was a big deal to be declared outlaws. We'll see. I say we take our little break.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 5:27Josh Clark?

  Come back and talk about outlawry a little more. How about that?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Here's a question for all you curious people. What's one thing you wish there was an app for? With Base44, you can build it yourself. It might be something simple, like a tool for a task your team does every week. You want the steps, useful links, and everyone's progress in one place.

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  Well, with Base44, describe that in your own words. You don't need to know coding or programming. Then you just keep editing and refining it until it works exactly the way you want. Your build comes headache free with built in login, data storage backend and hosting. So what's the app you wish existed?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Try it free and upgrade when you're ready. Go to base44.com to get started.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  Okay, so when you were declared an outlaw, essentially, the way I saw it written was that it amounted to a conviction as well as an extinction of civil rights. So there were different kinds of outlawry. Just failing to appear in court seems like outlaw lite, spelled L I T E. But there was also major outlawry, in which case you were really in trouble.

• 7:04Josh Clark?

  Like, big felonies, treason, rebellion, like, big deal stuff could have you labeled a major outlaw. And again, like, if they did find your cache of chickens, those were theirs now. They could take them. Any, like, real property you had, anything that was yours, they could seize and keep. And that's pretty standard stuff even still today. Like, if you get caught with suspected drug money, the sheriff just keeps your money and says, prove it's not drug money. That's not, like, completely out of the norm. The thing that really makes outlawry very surprising to us today is anybody could come and take your property. Anybody could come and beat you up and kill you.

• 7:47Josh Clark?

  And because the law no longer applied to you, there was no law that was broken when they murdered you. They weren't breaking a law. You had no protection any longer. And that's the thing that makes it really kind of shocking as far as, like, a legal formality is concerned to us today.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and even if someone, you know, your neighbor didn't come and rob your house or try and kill you or something, if you had outlaw status, you were definitely not a part of the community anymore. You were totally ostracized and shunned. Sometimes it was just sort of the way that, you know, everyone shuns somebody, which is very quietly and passive aggressively. Sometimes it was very much official, though. If they had an outlaw they captured.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  They could say like, hey, we're gonna really ostracize you. We're gonna send you to Australia. Have fun over there.

• 8:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, or America.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:42Josh Clark?

  And you would end up being an indentured servant. And one of the other things I read about that that was kind of interesting that really drove the point home. It's not just like, I'm an indentured servant over here now. I wish I wasn't. Like, maybe around your area, you might have some sympathetic friends that might hide you or bring you food out in the woods or something like that. In America or Australia, you probably knew no one. So you had no help whatsoever and you truly were ostracized. So that in and of itself was a big deal. Another thing that could happen to you too is if the sheriff ever did catch up with you. Like, there was a very high chance you were just killed on sight because you, it was a death sentence for you as well.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  Like, they had no obligation to bring you in. If they wanted to just kill you and get it over with, the sheriff could do that to you.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  You were so close to saying oz- ostracized.

• 9:38Josh Clark?

  Oh, I walked right past that on purpose.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:41Josh Clark?

  I'm kidding, I didn't, Chuck. That was a good one. I'm glad you pointed it out.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  So this was, you know, usually like real outlaws, like real criminals, even if it was something like not appearing in court. You said it was oftentimes a lot worse, but it wasn't always that. In some countries, I know we talked about it in our, I think we had a leprosy episode many years ago, right? Yeah. In India, if you had leprosy, you could be banned and ostracized and essentially get something akin to an outlaw status by being sent to a leper colony where you had, where you didn't have the same rights as everyone else. I think they call leprosy Hansen's disease now, is that right?

• 10:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  But no one would know what we meant if we just said that, so.

• 10:25Josh Clark?

  Probably not. A few people would. And those people were very satisfied that you just said that.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I knew the leper was not something that people say anymore.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  No. Um, yeah, but yeah, I can't remember who Hanson was. I think we talked about them in the episode too. But yeah, that was a long time ago, but it's a good episode. Haven't heard it in a while.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Same.

• 10:47Josh Clark?

  There were some ways to, to have your outlaw status revoked. One of them was just showing up to court.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:53Josh Clark?

  There was a specific court you had to go to. It was the King's Bench in London. So you had to make your way to London and you basically pled to have it removed. And I think that that was part of the procedure because again, if you showed up to the court that had called you in the first place, you might be murdered and that would be that.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:12Josh Clark?

  So that was, I think, the initial part of the process. And there, there does seem to be like a, a pretty generous amount of forgiveness for, you know, lesser crimes, I think like that, where you just hadn't shown up. Especially if you're like, I'm sorry, my foot, I twisted my ankle jogging and I, I just couldn't make it to court. Or, you know, my stupid cousin was supposed to, to take me, but his cart broke down, that kind of thing. The court would probably take pity on you and, and remove your outlaw status because now you were playing ball with them, which is the whole point of them conferring you an outlaw is that they, you hadn't in the first place. What was really shocking to me is that this same stuff could be applied

• 11:55Josh Clark?

  to somebody in a civil case. Like somebody's like, this guy stole my chickens. I'm going to sue you and you didn't show up. You could also be considered an outlaw for that too. That's just nuts.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is remarkable to hear.

• 12:09Josh Clark?

  And it wasn't until 1879 that England revoked that part of their outlaw statute, that it couldn't be used in civil cases anymore. But as far as I know, and I looked high and low for definitive proof of this, but just from references I saw, it seems like there's still outlaw books or outlaw statutes on the books for criminal acts.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Let's get rid of those.

• 12:37Josh Clark?

  So do it. Uh, you got anything else?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I got nothing else.

• 12:42Josh Clark?

  Well, Dave, this was a great idea. Thanks for it. Uh, short stuff is that.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.