October 1272
Any burgess who suffers distraint or arrest in a foreign place,
[i.e. elsewhere than Yarmouth] in order to make
payment [of a debt] due from [one of] his
neighbours, may recover his losses and damages from that neighbour. If
the neighbour lacks the means to make reparations, he shall be put out of
the community until able to make them; if afterwards he is discovered
conducting mercantile activities in the town, he is to be imprisoned until
he settles [with the injured party].
[This ordinance refers to a common practice, such as occurred
in cases of withernam: if a merchant
of Town-A, while visiting Town-B, incurred debts to a burgess of Town-B,
but failed to pay them, the burgess of Town-B could seek payment through
distraint upon the goods of any
burgess of Town-A who happened to be in Town-B this being a concept
inferred from the notion of community.
If unjust by modern standards, this was a pragmatic solution to the
problem that the Town-A merchant (if no longer in Town-B) could not be
obliged to come to Town-B's court to answer in a plea of debt, while had
it been possible to bring the case before Town-A's court, the defendant
might receive favouritism from the judges. Consequently retribution was
from one of the debtor's "neighbours" (i.e. fellow-citizens), thereby in
effect making him the surrogate of the creditor in seeking repayment of
the debt in the court of Town-A, where a case between two members of the
same community would receive more equitable treatment. The reference to
being put out of the community means
disfranchisement rather than
exile.]