The Escape of Avicia Lernaise: from Edith Carey's notebooks

Edith Carey translates this from the Latin.

Assize Roll 82 Ed. I (1303). Avicia Lerneyse

Ralph de Beauvoir, Jean Coquet, etc, Bordiers¹. Avicia was condemned to be burnt for killing her baby, and was taken away by the Bordiers to be led to the place where she was to be burnt according to judgment; to which Ralph and the others led her through the middle of the churchyard of St Peter Port. To where the chaplain and clerk of the same church came, and said that that place in the churchyard of the parish was a consecrated place where all ought to have refuge, and they as well as the aforesaid Avicia sought that they should not lead her from that place.

Notwithstanding this Ralph and the others led her to the place prepared to burn her – and afterwards brought her back safe and sound to the churchyard and left her there. She afterwards abjured the islands. Ralph and others were committed to jail because they led her through the churchyard instead of the King’s highway, whereby the judgment against her could not be carried out.

¹ A specific class of landowner, whose Bordages came with specific duties and privileges. Warburton, in his A Treatise on the History, Laws, and Customs of the Isle of Guernsey of 1682, explains that

Bordiers are such as hold lands or tenements from the crown, by the tenure of which they are obliged to perform certain services. Borde, in old French, signifies a house. Bordeau or Bordage is such a little tenement as these Bordiers hold. Of these there are upon the King's fief thirteen, who are called grands bordiers, of whom four at a time are obliged to appear in their course at the Courts of Inheritance every term, without which those Courts cannot be held. .... As far as their bordage extends, they are to perform the office of Serjeant. They are to attend the prévôt, as a guard, when he brings any criminal to be tried at the Court, and likewise when any such is condemned or sentenced, they are to assist the prévôt in conveying the prisoner to the place where the sentence is to be put in execution and there to attend until it be performed. (p. 59).