almonry. The borough includes the parish of Bengeworth St Peter, on the left bank of the river. Evesham is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 2265 acres.
Evesham (Homme, Ethomme) grew up around the Benedictine abbey, and had evidently become of some importance as a trading centre in 1055, when Edward the Confessor gave it a market and the privileges of a commercial town. It is uncertain when the town first became a borough, but the Domesday statement that the men paid 20s. may indicate the existence of a more or less organized body of tradesmen. Before 1482 the burgesses were holding the town at a fee farm rent of twenty marks, but the abbot still had practical control of the town, and his steward presided over the court at which the bailiffs were chosen. After the Dissolution the manor with the markets and fairs and other privileges was granted to Sir Philip Hoby, who increased his power over the town by persuading the burgesses to agree that, after they had nominated six candidates for the office of bailiff, the steward of the court instructed by him should indicate the two to be chosen. This privilege was contested by Queen Elizabeth, but when the case was taken before the court of the exchequer it was decided in favour of Sir Philip’s heir, Sir Edward Hoby. In 1604 James I. granted the burgesses their first charter, but in the following year, by a second charter, he incorporated Evesham with the village of Bengeworth, and granted that the borough should be governed by a mayor and seven aldermen, to whom he gave the power of holding markets and fairs and several other privileges which had formerly belonged to the lord of the manor. Evesham received two later charters, but in 1688 that of 1605 was restored and still remains the governing charter of the borough. Evesham returned two members to parliament in 1295 and again in 1337, after which date the privilege lapsed until 1604. Its two members were reduced to one by the act of 1867, and the borough was disfranchised in 1885.
Evesham gave its name to the famous battle, fought on the 4th of August 1265, between the forces of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, and the royalist army under Prince Edward. After a masterly campaign, in which the prince had succeeded in defeating Leicester in the valleys of the Severn and Usk, and had destroyed the forces of the younger Montfort at Kenilworth before he could effect a junction with the main body, the royalist forces approached Evesham in the morning of the 4th of August in time to intercept Leicester’s march towards Kenilworth. Caught in the bend of the river Avon by the converging columns, and surrounded on all sides, the old earl attempted to cut his way out of the town to the northward. At first the fury of his assault forced back the superior numbers of the prince; but Simon’s Welsh levies melted away and his enemies closed the last avenue of escape. The final struggle took place on Green Hill, a little to the north-west of the town, where the devoted friends of de Montfort formed a ring round their leader, and died with him. The spot is marked with an obelisk.
EVIDENCE (Lat. evidentia, evideri, to appear clearly), a term
which may be defined briefly as denoting the facts presented to
the mind of a person for the purpose of enabling him to decide
a disputed question. Evidence in the widest sense includes all
such facts, and reference may be made to the article Logic for
the science or art of dealing with the proper way of drawing
correct conclusions and the nature of proof. In a narrower
sense, however, evidence includes in English law only such facts
as are allowed to be so presented in the course of judicial proceedings.
Thus we say that a fact is not evidence, meaning
thereby that it is not admissible as evidence in accordance with
the rules of English law. The law of legal evidence is part of the
law of procedure. It determines the kinds of evidence which
may be produced in judicial proceedings, and regulates the mode
in which, and the conditions under which, evidence may be
produced and tested.
The English law of evidence is of comparatively modern growth. It enshrines certain maxims, some derived from Roman law, some invented by Coke, who, as J. B. Thayer says, “spawned Latin maxims freely.” But for the most part it was built up by English judges in the course of the History. 18th century, and consists of this judge-made law, as modified by statutory enactments of the 19th century. Early Teutonic procedure knew nothing of evidence in the modern sense, just as it knew nothing of trials in the modern sense. What it knew was “proofs.” There were two modes of proof, ordeals and oaths. Both were appeals to the supernatural. The judicial combat was a bilateral ordeal. Proof followed, instead of preceding, judgment. A judgment of the court, called by German writers the Beweisurteil, and by M. M. Bigelow the “medial judgment,” awarded that one of the two litigants must prove his case, by his body in battle, or by a one-sided ordeal, or by an oath with oath-helpers, or by the oaths of witnesses. The court had no desire to hear or weigh conflicting testimony. To do so would have been to exercise critical faculties, which the court did not possess, and the exercise of which would have been foreign to the whole spirit of the age. The litigant upon whom the burden of furnishing proof was imposed had a certain task to perform. If he performed it, he won; if he failed, he lost. The number of oath-helpers varied in different cases, and was determined by the law or by the court. They were probably, at the outset, kinsmen, who would have had to take up the blood-feud. At a later stage they became witnesses to character. In the cases, comparatively rare, where the oaths of witnesses were admitted as proof, their oaths differed materially from the sworn testimony of modern courts. As a rule no one could testify to a fact unless, when the fact happened, he was solemnly “taken to witness.” Then, when the witness was adduced, he came merely to swear to a set formula. He did not make a promissory oath to answer questions truly. He merely made an assertory oath in a prescribed form.
In the course of the 12th and 13th centuries the old formal accusatory procedure began to break down, and to be superseded by another form of procedure known as inquisitio, inquest, or enquête. Its decay was hastened by the decree of the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, which forbade ecclesiastics to take part in ordeals. The Norman administrative system introduced into England by the Conquest was familiar with a method of ascertaining and determining facts by means of a verdict, return or finding made on oath by a body of men drawn from the locality. The system may be traced to Carolingian, and even earlier, sources. Henry II., by instituting the grand assize and the four petty assizes, placed at the disposal of litigants in certain actions the opportunity of giving proof by the verdict of a sworn inquest of neighbours, proof “by the country.” The system was gradually extended to other cases, criminal as well as civil. The verdict given was that of persons having a general, but not necessarily a particular, acquaintance with the persons, places and facts to which the inquiry related. It was, in fact, a finding by local popular opinion. Had the finding of such an inquest been treated as final and conclusive in criminal cases, English criminal procedure might, like the continental inquisition, the French enquête, have taken the path which, in the forcible language of Fortescue (De laudibus, &c.) “leads to hell” (semita ipsa est ad gehennam). Fortunately English criminal procedure took a different course. The spirit of the old accusatory procedure was applied to the new procedure by inquest. In serious cases the words of the jurors, the accusing jurors, were treated not as testimony, but as accusation, the new indictment was treated as corresponding to the old appeal, and the preliminary finding by the accusing jury had to be supplemented by the verdict of another jury. In course of time the second jury were required to base their findings not on their own knowledge, but on evidence submitted to them. Thus the modern system of inquiry by grand jury and trial by petty jury was gradually developed.
A few words may here be said about the parallel development of criminal procedure on the continent of Europe. The tendency in the 12th and 13th centuries to abolish the old formal methods of procedure, and to give the new procedure the name of inquisition or inquest, was not peculiar to England. Elsewhere the old procedure was breaking down at the same time, and for similar reasons. It was the great pope Innocent III., the pope
