“Justice is great profit”; so ran the medieval lawyers' proverb, in the sense that rights of justice over the people were very lucrative. The lord reaped a fine for almost every offence; he took a fine from litigants if they came to an agreement outside his court; he took all the chattels of the condemned felon or of the fugitive offender; he took a fee from the serf who wanted to search the court-rolls for information as to his dues and services. Ecclesiastical judges throve even more, if possible, on the fines taken for offences; the bishops, writes Gower, take bribes wholesale, and the deans of Christianity “desire sin; for our dean gets far more profit from a harlot than from a nun”. In the courts even of kings and princes, we have seen how the poor had little chance of a hearing, since they brought no gifts to the judges; and there is no reason to surmise a higher standard in the manor courts. Or rather, there is every reason to surmise an even lower standard; the steward or bailiff has as bad a reputation in the Middle Ages as the miller. The Council of Tours, in 813, complained that the country was full of false witnesses ready to testify to anything for a small bribe (§34); Gower, again, speaks of these professional perjurers; and there is a plain allusion to the same subject in Piers Plowman.