Catholicism, as "recusancy", became a crime prosecutable in the secular courts of early modern England after the introduction of the "recusant penal laws" during the 1580s. Recusancy, however, remained one of the least effectively prosecuted crimes throughout the seventeenth century. This was especially true in the north of England, remote from the centre and close to the northern border. The present case study concentrates on a lawsuit brought before the Star Chamber in London which was fought between groups of leading magistrates of the East Riding of Yorkshire. The case stemmed from a conflict that arouse among local justices over a much-disputed recusant prosecution at the quarter session at Pocklington (Yorkshire) in January 1615. The conflict flared up against a backdrop of heightened rivalries among leading Yorkshire gentry, which were reinforced by religious antagonism. The conflicting reactions of magisterial factions on recusant proceedings caused various interactions and subtle negotiations among the justices and between them and the grand jury, which played a crucial role in indicting recusants. The interplay among those involved, reconstructed from the interrogatories, depositions and witnesses, highlights several problems that existed in enforcing the recusant penal laws in the north of England. It also illuminates different stances adopted by individual justices and the grand jury and their influences at different points in the legal process. Furthermore, the allegations of litigants and their alleged conduct both testify to how they justified themselves at the two courts in question, one in the centre (the Star Chamber) and the other in the locality (the quarter session at Pocklington). By reconstructing process of recusant prosecution, the author describes the negotiations that took place among the conflicting justices and the grand jury, each of them acting according to the rules of law and locality. The two courts bacame strong magnetic fields to which were drawn intersecting polemics of Catholic/Protestant, old/new, and the justices/the grand jury dichotomies. It was a process in which people fought, achieved and maintained order in their locality, thus determining the practices regarding recusancy and its prosecution in the North. Furthermore, participation of individual subjects in this judicial process itself worked as an important opportunity for forging how order in the kingdom would be constituted.

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After the completion of the Nasiri Cadastre (713-25/1313-25), the Mamluk Dynasty (648-922/1250-1517) was able to establish a unified ruling regime based on the bestowal of iqta's. Although it is clear that iqta' holders and holding patterns were closely connected to the "Mamluk regime", the actual conditions of iqta' holdings have yet to be ascertained due to a scarcity of contemporary sources. This article examines the actual conditions of iqta' holdings in Egypt during the late Mamluk period on the basis of the Ottoman military register Daftar Jayshi, which contains copies of iqta' holding records during that time. The author has analyzed approximately 700 such records from the following aspects: (1) the social demographics of holders, (2) patterns of ownership and (3) inheritance and succession of holdings. As a result, this analyses shows a few significant characteristics of iqta' holdings. The analysis first reveals that awlad al-nas (sons of mamluks) had held their iqta's on a par with mamluks, in contrast to previous research arguing that their holdings were tending to decrease during the late Mamluk period. Secondly, there was a diversity of holders, including not only mamluks but also awlad al-nas and civilians, who held their iqta's in conjunction with kinsfolk and members of their households. In addition, they took over their iqta's among them. The author defines such holdings as "iqta's for pensions", since they diverged from the ideal concept of iqta' holdings for providing solidarity and cohesion among the military class of the "Mamlak regime". Finally, these "iqta's for pensions" were ultimately turned into private land holding or waqfs. This means that the spread of "iqta's for pensions" led to an expansion of private land ownership and waqfs, a characteristic phenomenon of the late Mamlak period.

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The aim of this article is to reexamine the characteristic features of the distribution structure of the cow and horse leather industry in western Japan focusing on the activities of deputy managers (tedai 手代) in charge of wholesale warehouses and their temporarily employed eta (穢多) subordinates (tesaki 手先). During the region's late premodern period, the leather that was produced by the inferior caste of eta from the hides of dead animals was sent to the village of Watanabe in Osaka, where the leather wholesaling industry was concentrated. The most influential research done to date on the people who directed the distribution of leather from these warehouses is the work done by Tsukada Takashi, who has argued that within the intermediary role played by the wholesalers in both buying and selling, leather merchants gained control of distribution. That being said, based on the results from research concentrating on the history of distribution during the period, which has shown definite differences between wholesalers and middlemen, the author assumes that it was tedai who functioned as middlemen, and concludes that it is necessary to reconsider tedai activities. To begin with, the author explicitly shows that the role of wholesale middlemen was represented by the activities of warehouse deputy managers and that the buying and selling of leather was directly transacted by them on the basis of personal relations established between deputy managers and local eta. Secondly, tesaki were also involved in leather commerce, their role was temporary in merely helping to collect freight for the wholesalers. Since tesaki were temporary employees, they could be employed by other wholesalers. In such cases, tesaki posed a disturbance the leather collection of their former employers. Although the activities of tesaki were similar to those of tedai, there was a difference in that the former traded on the basis of transient relationships for profit, while the latter worked for the profit of warehouse which they served. The author concludes that the activities of tedai and the eta caste tesaki brought about significant changes in both the structure of leather distribution throughout western Japan, in general, and in the internal village structure of Watanabe, in particular. In so doing, this type of leather merchant as the dominant actor in the leather trade. Thus, leather merchants such as tedai and tesaki who actively engaged in transactions had a large impact on the traditional order of the leather wholesale distribution system.

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