After 1066, this medieval fine was imposed to deter anti-Norman violence

It’s early in the 13th century. You stumble across a corpse: clearly the victim of murder. What should you do?

To modern eyes, there’s no question; no reasonable grounds for equivocation. The only option is to tell someone.

But in medieval England, finding a dead body was a more fraught – and risky – incident.

Entire villages and communities could be fined not because they had committed a crime, but because the burden lay with them to prove who the deceased was – or, more precisely, whether they were English or Norman.

This wasn’t a quirk of legal technicality. In the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, questions of identity were difficult and tense. To deter violence against Norman settlers, a striking piece of collective punishment known as the murdrum fine was designed. It was created to limit violence against Normans in post-Conquest England, but in practice, all it did was expose resonant inequalities within medieval society.

Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Luke Foddy explains how the murdrum fine emerged, how it operated on the ground, and how it was later manipulated in ways that caused real hardship.

A legal system under strain after the Norman Conquest

The Norman Conquest in 1066 had reshaped England’s ruling class with extraordinary speed.

William the Conqueror replaced much of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy with Norman lords, bishops and officials, creating a sharp national and social divide between rulers and the majority English population they governed.

The legal system struggled to cope with this change, and it was in this strained legal environment that the murdrum fine took on particular importance.

What was the murdrum fine?

The murdrum fine was enforced by King William I after 1066, although, as Foddy notes, “there’s some evidence that it was around before then, particularly in the Danelaw” – referring to the English region where the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons coexisted uneasily together from the late 9th century.

It was imposed on communities that were close to where dead bodies were discovered.

“If a body was found, the people of the local area – typically four nearby villages – had to prove, or convince the coroner, that this person was English. So, they had to know the person and they had to identify them.”

If the local people couldn’t identify the deceased, the law assumed that the victim was Norman and that he had been murdered by the local English population. In that case, the entire community was fined.

“The rationale was that it was to stop the English bumping off the Normans every time their backs were turned,” Foddy explains. Through a vicious collective punishment, the law aimed to protect the new ruling elite and deter violence against them.

At first, the fine applied only to clear cases of murder. But over time, that definition began to erode.

When revenue became a motivation

By the reign of Henry III (1216–1272), the murdrum fine had shifted in character. “During Henry III’s reign, and his drive to get more revenue,” Foddy explains, “it became applied to any corpse that was found.”

This expansion coincided with a period of acute crisis. In 1258, England was struck by severe famine. Crops failed and food prices soared, and people travelled the country in search of food and work.

Contemporary chronicler Matthew Paris described bodies lying unburied in streets and pigsties, scattered across towns and countryside alike. In such itinerant conditions, proving ‘Englishry’ – the legal requirement to show that the deceased was English – became extraordinarily difficult.

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“You can imagine that there are people coming from other communities that villages don’t know,” Foddy says. “They can’t prove Englishry in these cases.”

But the law made no allowances. Even in periods of famine, villages were fined when unknown bodies were found, as the king sought to bring more money into the coffers by any means possible.

The burden fell hardest on poorer communities, who were least able to absorb the financial penalties.

Reform and the limits of royal power

Change came only with the political crisis of the late 1250s, when reformers sought to curb royal authority and address grievances against Henry III’s rule.

“They don’t abolish [the murdrum fine] completely,” Foddy explains, “but they make it clear that it should only apply in the case of felonious slayings.”

Crucially, these reforms explicitly acknowledged the extraordinary social disruption caused by famine.

By narrowing the scope of the law, reformers reduced its most punitive effects.

“This was a really positive step certainly for the poorer people in the country,” Foddy says, “who were getting hammered by these really unjust customs.”

But still, nearly two centuries after the Norman Conquest, the country was reckoning with its far-reaching effects.

Luke Foddy was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.