Now and then the list of fines makes one wonder what story is hidden behind them. For instance, why was the wife of Hugh de Nevill fined for permission to stay one night with her husband? Was he in prison? Again, Reginald de Tewarden is fined twenty marks for permission to keep his lands after he had undergone the ordeal of hot iron unsuccessfully, and had abjured the country. He was proved guilty apparently. And was the fine of twenty marks thought the kind of penalty that would meet the case? William de Thievespathe—ominous name!—makes the same request for the same cause and with the same result. The iron, therefore, was sometimes hot. Another man, one Gospatric, pays twenty marks as a fine to escape the ordeal of hot iron. William of Sixteen Tale pays the large fine of £80 for wounding a priest: Robert, son of Hugh, gets off with £7: 2: 9—enough, however, to break a craftsman—for wounding “a man”; observe the difference between a man and a priest. Lawrence the Priest has to pay twenty marks “pro homine ementulato.” Who, again, was “Jeremy of London”? He took sanctuary, he refused to come out, they fined him a hundred shillings, and then? There is no more. Margaret FitzRoger has to pay a fine of £1000 before she can get at her inheritance, to wit, her father’s estate, her husband’s, her own dower, which her son has got, and be released from certain debts to the Jews. Sometimes the fine took the form of a bribe, as when Nathaniel Leveland, hereditary keeper of the King’s houses at Westminster and on the banks of the Fleet, sent in a fine of sixty marks for permission to keep that office, and Osbert de Longchamp paid the same fine for permission to take over those offices. Every fine, whatever the amount, was either increased by a small sum or contained that small sum, which was called Aurum Reginæ, the Queen’s Gold. Thus when Thomas FitzAnther was forgiven his fine of ten marks, the Aurum Reginæ was at the same time remitted. In the year 1253 the City of London was called upon to pay up the Aurum Reginæ, part of the fine for receiving back their liberties, and in 1254 the Sheriffs were ordered to distrain for the amount.