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Procedural Innovation and Institutional Change in Medieval English Manorial Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

John S. Beckerman
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Extract

In England during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the royal courts cast a longer and longer shadow over private and local jurisdictions. By a series of steps embracing much innovation, the custom of the king's court gradually became the common law of England, and the royal courts asserted their supremacy over other jurisdictions in many areas. Foremost among these were disputes over freehold land and cases involving felonies. It has been suggested that the royal innovations’ jurisdictional effects on private courts were “neither intended nor foreseen.” Nonetheless, they reduced private jurisdictions—with the exception of the palatinates—to constitutional insignificance during the thirteenth century. Occasional baronial objections, such as that enshrined in clause thirty-four of Magna Carta or the bluff waving of a rusty sword at a quo warranto inquest do not disguise this basic fact of English legal and constitutional history.

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Law and History Review , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , Fall 1992 , pp. 197 - 252
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1992

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References

1. Milsom, S. F. C., The Legal Framework of English Feudalism (Cambridge, 1976), 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Sutherland, D. W., The Assize of Novel Disseisin (Oxford, 1973), 34Google Scholar (suggesting that Henry II and advisers may have planned exaltation of royal courts over local jurisdictions by opening royal courts to all tenants of freehold land).

2. Clause thirty-four provided that the writ precipe would not thenceforth be issued to anyone concerning any tenement whereby a free man might lose his court. McKechnie, W. S., Magna Carta, 2d ed. (Glasgow, 1914), 346–55Google Scholar. The story of the rusty sword, from Rothwell, H., ed., The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, Camden Series, vol. 89 (Royal Historical Society, 1957), 216Google Scholar, is recounted by Sutherland, D. W., Quo Warranto Proceedings in the Reign of Edward 11278-1294 (Oxford, 1963), 82 n. 2Google Scholar. Summoned to court to answer by what warrant he held his lands, Earl John de Warenne held up an old rusty sword and said, “Here my lords, here is my warrant! My ancestors came with William the Bastard and conquered their lands with the sword, and I shall defend them with the sword against anyone who tries to usurp them. The king did not conquer and subject the land by himself, but our forefathers were partners and co-workers with him.”

3. For example, Adams, G. B., “Private Jurisdiction in England: A Theoretical Reconstruction,” American Historical Review 23 (1918): 596–602CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. For example, the court of the honor of Walbrook was in an extreme state of decline by the late thirteenth century. By the time Walbrook escheated to the crown on the death of Isabel de Forz in 1293, it was an honor devoid of demesne manors, all of which had descended in other families. It still had a court, however, whose rolls from 1294-96 and 1298 reveal “not only a lack of pleas, owing to the general decline of feudal jurisdiction, but a complete lack of administrative business” as well. Denholm-Young, N., “Eudo Dapifer's Honour of Walbrook,” English Historical Review 46 (1931): 623–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. This article is based on research in the medieval manorial court rolls in the Public Record Office (in the class SC2), the British Library, the muniments of Westminster Abbey and of New College Oxford, the surviving medieval court books of St. Albans Abbey (containing extracts from the court rolls beginning in 1237), and various legal practitioners’ treatises and published court rolls referenced in the footnotes.

6. The term is Professor Milsom's. Legal Framework, chap. 1, especially 25 et seq. The lord's disciplinary jurisdiction remained extensive with respect to customary tenures, despite its virtual disappearance over freehold. Idem, Historical Foundations of the Common Law, 2d ed. (Toronto, 1969), 22.

7. Holmes, G. A., The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1957), 85Google Scholar.

8. Levett, A. E., Studies in Manorial History (Oxford, 1938), 21.Google Scholar

9. Only gradually did distinctions evolve between law and fact and between the proper spheres of activity for judges and juries. See Thayer, J. B., “Law and Fact in Jury Trials,” Harvard Law Review 4 (1890): 147–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Maitland, F. W., ed., Select Pleas in Manorial and Other Seignorial Courts, Selden Society, vol. 2 (1889), lxviiiGoogle Scholar.

11. Maitland suspected that the procedural innovations of presentment by jury and trial by jury altered the constitution of manorial courts, weakening the position of the suitors and elevating the position of the steward. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, lxxvii. Although other commentators have disagreed, for exampleGoogle Scholar, Ault, W. O., Private Jurisdiction in England (New Haven, 1923), 165–72Google Scholar, and Dawson, J. P., A History of Lay Judges (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 201,CrossRefGoogle Scholar Maitland was substantially correct.

12. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, xlvii-lii. Until the 1230s, courts could be held fortnightly, as evidenced by many entries in the Curia Regis Rolls.Google Scholar

13. Although great courts were usually held semiannually, it was not unheard of to hold three per year rather than two. Curia Regis Rolls (PRO), 15:137.

14. For private hundredal jurisdiction exercised in conjunction with a manor court, see H. M. Cam, “Manerium cum Hundredo: the Hundred and the Hundredal Manor,” reprinted in Liberties and Communities in Medieval England (London, 1963), 64-90.

15. Sutherland, Quo Warranto Proceedings, 3-4, 141-42, 164-66.

16. For example, if there were doubt as to which son should succeed a deceased tenant in his landholding, the elder or younger, or whether the tenement should be partible between them, the matter would be put to the suitors for decision.

17. If Tom claimed a tenement held by Dick, basing his claim on the seisin of his ancestor Harry, from whom he should have inherited, and Dick answered that Harry was never seised or that Tom was a bastard, an inquest of the suitors would be taken to determine the issue.

18. For example, Curia Regis Rolls 2:56, 14: pl. 1737.

19. According to Glanvill, in addition to cases in which there was no specific accuser, the ordeals could be used if the accused were old or seriously injured, or in cases of appeals of felony by women. Hall, G. D. G., ed., Glanvill (London, 1965), 171, 173, 175-76Google Scholar. Women could not participate in judicial duels, and persons over the age of sixty or with broken bones or head injuries were permitted to refuse trial by battle. Ibid.

20. Curia Regis Rolls 8:41. For Waltham's hundredal jurisdiction, see Cam, “Manerium cum Hundredo,” 82 n. 6.

21. Some of the lords’ courts that were still hearing actions of right at the beginning of the thirteenth century and trying some of them by battle were probably courts of manors. How many they were, compared with courts of honors where land litigation could also proceed, it is impossible to tell. The few private courts with criminal franchises exalted enough to entertain appeals would have used battle as a normal part of their criminal procedure, most commonly to try appeals of larceny.

22. For example, Maitland, F. W. and Baildon, W. P., eds., The Court Baron, Selden Society, vol. 4 (1891), 62–67.Google Scholar

23. Ault, W. O., ed., Court Rolls of the Abbey of Ramsey and of the Honor of Clare (New Haven, 1928), 14Google Scholar.

24. Hall, Glanvill, 28; Kaye, J. M., ed., Placita Corone, Selden Society supp. ser., vol. 4 (1966), xxviiGoogle Scholar.

25. "…chescune ley gage est proprement en le negative de la demaunde ou de la querele.…” Harvard Law School, MS. 162, fol. 183v, In rare instances, plaintiffs were permitted to prove affirmative propositions, such as “he owes” or “he is bound” by oath-swearing. For example, Hertford County Record Office, Gorhambury Deeds, X.D.O: A, B, and C “Kingsbury Court Book”), fol. 59r. Oath-swearing by a plaintiff was not rare in itself, but usually occurred in a denial of defendant's assertion that the debt had been paid or the obligation fulfilled. For example, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, MS MD 225, m. 14 (Wakefield, Yorks. 1345). Trial by battle, on the other hand, was a test of an affirmative assertion. Milsom, Legal Framework, 3.

26. Plucknett, T. F. T., A Concise History of the Common Law, 5th ed. (London, 1956), 115Google Scholar.

27. For example, PRO SC2/183/57 m. Id (Burbage, Wilts., 1323) (person who waged law could not find pledges that he would perfect it).

28. "Et quia tendit sibi legem cum senistra manu ideo consideratum est quod omnino sit indefensus.” PRO SC2/183/1 m. 4 (Yalding, Kent, 1291).

29. Harvard Law School, MS. 162, fol. 180r; British Library, MS Egerton 656, fol. 191r-v.

30. Similarly, if a defendant agreed to submit to the verdict of an inquest and later refused the inquest, the refusal led to conviction. For example, see W. P. Baildon et al., eds., Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, Yorkshire Archaeological Society (1906), 2:130; M. K. Dale, ed., Court Roll of Chalgrave Manor 1278-1313, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, vol. 28 (1950), 37.

31. For example, Massingberd, W. O., trans., Court Rolls of the Manor of Ingoldmells in the County of Lincoln (London and Ingoldmells, 1902), 173Google Scholar (1376, age specified as fifteen years).

32. For example, at Halesowen, Worcs., in 1300, villeins were not allowed to acquit themselves by oath-swearing of charges brought in the name of the lord of the manor. J. Amphlett et al., eds., Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales, Worcestershire Historical Society (1933), 3:135. At Ingoldmells, Lines., in 1313, a judgment of a plea of debt was adjourned while the court decided whether a bond tenant should be allowed to wage his law against another bond tenant or the case should go to an inquest. Massingberd, Ingoldmells, 32. At Mapledurham, Hants., in 1368, the plaintiff counted in a plea of trespass that the defendant had negligently burned down the plaintiffs house. The defendant pleaded the general issue and offered to wage his law, whereupon the plaintiff objected that according to the custom of the manor, no villein tenant was permitted to wage his law against another villein tenant in a plea of trespass. Trial should be by inquest, he continued, and a jury of twelve of the better and more prudent men of the whole homage agreed with him. British Library, Add. Roll 28047.

33. Possibly villeins were not considered lawful and trustworthy enough to acquit themselves by oath. Certain borough custumals specifically excluded villeins and serfs from defense by compurgation, presumably on this ground. Bateson, M., ed., Borough Customs, Selden Society, vols. 18, 21 (1904-1906), 1:50Google Scholar. The ban on compurgation, where it existed, may thus have been one of the disabilities of villein status or villeinage tenure.

34. At the end of an accusation, the plaintiff was required to produce secta, or “suit” as it is usually translated. The suit consisted of one or two “complaint-witnesses,” whose function was to uphold and confirm the justness of the plaintiffs claim. The term “complaint-witness” is from Thayer, J. B., A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law (London, 1898), 10Google Scholar.

35. "Ore est asaver qe ly coveent auer sywte que parle, ceo est asauer deus hummes, et ceo ne coueent mye par bref en la court le Rey, et coueent que il eyt vne voyz que teymoygne et dye, ‘Ceo est veyrs.’” Egerton 656, fol. 189v.

36. Says the Modus Tenendi Curias (ca. 1307), “Et sciendum autem est quod ad solam vocem sine secta non debet quis audiri, set hoc in primis calumpnietur.” Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 84. For example, PRO SC2/175/41 m. 6 (Hawkesbury, Glos. 1292) (defendant objected that plaintiff did not produce suit (testes ad querelam suam classificandam), whereupon plaint was quashed.

37. Harvard Law School, MS. 162, fol. 188v. Cf. Bateson, Borough Customs 2:50-51.

38. For example, Baildon et al., Wakefield 1:191, 212.

39. For example, Amphlett et al., Hales 3:142-43.

40. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 173.

41. Harvard Law School, MS. 162, fol. 180r; Egerton 656, fol. 19v.

42. In various boroughs, on the other hand, the number of oath-helpers in cases of serious crimes was determined by the nature of the offense. Bateson, Borough Customs 2:36-47.

43. For example, Pugh, R. B., ed., Court Rolls of the Wiltshire Manors of Adam de Stratton, Wiltshire Record Society, vol. 24 (1970), 77Google Scholar (1283, defendant made law sola voce contra solam vocem).

44. Usually it appears that the party was included in the number of hands; occasionally not. Third- and sixth-handed were the most common numbers; a twelfth-handed oath usually signified a more serious offense.

45. The possibility of a guilty person being cleared through the compurgation ritual appears to have been recognized as early as the Assize of Clarendon, c. 14 (1166).

46. For example, Plucknett, Concise History, 126-27.

47. Maitland, E W., ed., Year Books, 2&3 Edward II, Selden Society, vol. 19 (1904), 196.Google Scholar

48. Milsom, , Historical Foundations, 281–282.Google Scholar

49. Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., ed., Select Cases of Procedure Without Writ Under Henry III, Selden Society, vol. 60 (1941), 124Google Scholar.

50. Statutes of the Realm 1:66.

51. Thomas, A. H., ed., Calendar of Early Mayor's Court Rolls of the City of London (London, 1924), xxxiiiGoogle Scholar.

52. Where Egerton 656, fol. 190v reads “haut trespas,” the same treatise in British Library, MS Royal 9.A.VII reads “plus haut trespas.”

53. Egerton 656, fol. 190v “en chekun tele court gist auerement du pays”). Maitland took this for a denial that compurgation could be used in a plea of trespass and thought it demonstrated the progress made by jury trial even in private courts. Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 16. The treatise, however, does not speak of all trespasses, as Maitland implied. It sets off a class of serious offenses, all of which were likely to have been committed forcibly, against the peace. Indeed, they might have been prosecuted with an allegation of felony in courts where such an allegation would not have placed the action beyond the court's jurisdiction.

54. Maitland, , Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 143.Google Scholar

55. PRO SC2/180/6 d. For a verdict of 1308 also suggesting that a “simple” trespass was one which did not have to be presented at the toum, see Baildon et al., Wakefield 2:157-58.

56. For presentment and presentable offenses, see the section on presentment procedure infra. An allegation of breach of the king's peace also precluded compurgation by a defendant. Milsom, Historical Foundations, 293. It also placed a plea beyond the jurisdiction of courts other than the king's.

57. Imprisonment was the usual punishment for wrongfully denying one's own deed. Pugh, R. B., Imprisonment in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1968), 13.Google Scholar

58. Harvard Law School, MS. 162, fols. 177r, 180v.

59. Cam, H. M., ed., The Eyre of London, Selden Society, vol. 86 (1969), 347Google Scholar.

60. It is logical to think that this rule was related originally to the difficulty lords had in compelling free men to serve as jurors. Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2d. ed. (Cambridge, 1968), 2:635Google Scholar.

61. Cam, Eyre of London, 381.

62. Egerton 656 fol. 192r; Harvard Law School, MS. 162, fol. 176v. Although today it seems contrary to reason that the introduction of better proof should foreclose a litigant from a recovery, the rule about the effects of specialty in manor courts was consistent with contemporary legal logic, which deduced much substantive law, particularly matters of jurisdiction, from rules about proof. Milsom, Legal Framework, 2 et seq. Indeed, the jurisdictional paradox created by the manor court's theoretical inability to try a deed or punish one who wrongfully denied his own deed may account for the general persistence of oath-swearing in manor courts in lawsuits involving transactions.

63. Cf. Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law 1:550Google Scholar (absence of jury trial in Berkeley hundred as late as seventeenth century).

64. For example, PRO SC2/176/130 m. 3 (Ashwell, Herts., 1328) (battery); ibid. SC2/199/2 (Milverton, Som., 1398) (battery and wounding).

65. When the mode of trial was chosen by the court, compurgation was often favored because it was least expensive and onerous from the court's perspective. If a jury were ordered, the court, through its bailiff, was responsible for procuring the attendance of the jurors, but if trial were by oath-swearing, the defendant was responsible for producing the required number of oath-helpers at the proper time. Egerton 656, fol. 191 v “Et si ceo deit estre enquys par pays, couuent auer eyde de la court de fere vener les procheyns veysins la ou la fet fut fet”).

66. Milsom, Historical Foundations, 257.

67. Yorkshire Archeological Society, MS. 759 (1334), 64-65. Similarly, in the City of London, an exception to the rule just described permitted executors to employ compurgation in cases of debts incurred by their decedents by swearing that they knew nothing of the debt or of the agreement and that they understood by their consciences that their testator, on his death, owed nothing to the plaintiff nor had broken any agreement with him. Bateson, Borough Customs 1:211 “… q'ils savoient riens del duite, ne del contract, ne de le covenaunt, et q'ils entendent par lour conscience que lour testatour a soun mouriant riens devoit al pleintif, ne nul covenaunt luy avoit enfreint”).

68. Longstaffe, W. H. and Booth, J., eds., Halmota Prioratus Dunelmensis, Surtees Society, vol. 82 (1886), 192, 197, 225.Google Scholar

69. Pugh, Adam de Stratton, 110. A court roll entry of 1247 from Ogbourne, Wilts., “Rogerus Playdur in lege contra Nicholaum Crok quod ipse non interfecit pavonem suam, nec aliquis de suis,” Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 9, suggests oath-supported testimony to the behavior of others, here possibly in Roger's mainpast. Comparison with other denials, however, suggests that aliquis may be an error for aliquam, even though this would not yield a strictly logical result: “Roger did not kill Nicholas's peacock, or any of them.”

70. In thirteenth-century London, for example, when a person accused of a serious crime was to acquit himself by the “great law,” that is, with thirty-six oath-helpers, the oath-helpers were chosen not by the defendant, but by the mayor and citizens, and eighteen had to come from each side of the Walbrook. Bateson, Borough Customs 1:37-39. Such a large number of oath-helpers, chosen impartially, would certainly have had to inquire concerning the facts before being able to swear that the defendant's oath of denial was true.

71. Egerton 656, fol. 191r.

72. Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 17.

73. Of course, it was also possible to add limiting words. In another version of the treatise, the phrase a nostre assient, “to the best of our knowledge” or “so far as we know,” appears in the oath. Harvard Law School, MS. 162, fol. 180r. This much resembles the occasional jury verdict where the record states that the jurors come and say that so far as they know (super eorum intellectu) or that they believe (quod credunt) that such-and-such was the case. Clearly the knowledge of facts signified by these assertions is limited, but it appears that the oath-helpers evolved into more than mere character witnesses, as Maitland took them to be.

74. Dawson, History of Lay Judges, 200, implies that inquest replaced wager of law in real actions, but there is no evidence to suggest that compurgation was ever employed in lawsuits about land (except to prove a denial that the tenant had received proper summons, etc.).

75. For example, on the St. Albans Abbey estates (until 1355) and elsewhere, villein holdings could be leased for one or two years without enrollment.

76. In a suit over a tenement, the two parties, demandant and tenant, would come and set out their claims, much as in the trial of a royal writ of right. The manorial inquest in land litigation was occasionally compared with the grand assize, which came to be the royal court's ordinary method of trying cases initiated by writ of right. One party, usually the demandant, would purchase an inquest from the lord. The sale of inquests was a source of seignorial profit. Prices varied, but the ordinary inquest for a villeinage tenement on most estates in the thirteenth century appears to have cost from sixpence to two shillings, with occasional litigants willing to pay more for inquests on large or particularly valuable holdings. The inquest would be taken of the whole court, the entire body of suitors. When inquests were taken of all the suitors, rather than a jury of some of them, the processes of giving a verdict and rendering judgment were not always distinct.

77. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 147.

78. PRO SC2/153/67 m. 2d (Brightwaltham, Berks.) (plaintiff sought a tunic or three ells of cloth that were to be rendered to him annually for life, in return for his land, which he had granted to the defendant's husband)(emphasis added).

79. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 148.

80. Juries were first employed by manorial lords during the second half of the twelfth century on ecclesiastical estates when lords wished to ascertain points of manorial custom or compile an estate custumal. Lennard, R. V., “Early Manorial Juries,” English Historical Review 77 (1962): 511–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To extend their use to litigation was but a short step. Nonetheless, some estates were quicker than others to adopt jury procedure. On the Abbey of Bee's manors, juries of twelve were normally deciding litigated disputes before 1250. On the estates of St. Albans Abbey, in contrast, inquests of the whole court continued to be taken into the fourteenth century, although occasional trial juries appear earlier.

81. In personal actions, the choice of trial ordinarily lay with the defendant, subject to the qualifications already mentioned, that in certain courts compurgation was not available to bond tenants or villeins, in cases of presentable trespasses, and generally in lawsuits where the plaintiff produced a specialty. If the defendant did not seek a particular mode of trial, one was chosen for him by the court.

82. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 32, 37. The reason that John Hughes was allowed to refuse the verdict in the case just cited was probably that he was a free man, entitled to refuse any trial by his social inferiors. For a similar case, see Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 334. Similarly, at Wakefield, Yorks., in 1285, a defendant successfully acquitted himself by compurgation from a charge of wrongfully taking a sow. The plaintiff immediately offered a shilling for an inquest, which was taken in the same court and awarded the sow to the plaintiff, although not, as it appears, on precisely the same issue. Baildon et al., Wakefield 2:232.

83. In the records of the Ramsey Abbey manors, for example, compurgation is not at all in evidence by 1320, even in pleas of debt.

84. Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS. Δi, i “Abbot's Langley Court Book”), fols. 22v-23r “de eorum assensu supplicaverunt domino quod inquireretur de veritate facti et rei super assisam predictam et waiviare placitum primo placitatum.” A second inquest disclosed the whole obscure story involving a tortious conveyance, specifically a surrender by a tenant who lacked an estate in the property conveyed.

85. PRO SC2/173/53 m. 9d. The plaintiffs attorney objected that he had not denied tort and force or the plaintiff's damage, as custom demanded, and he sought judgment for recovery of the debt and damages in view of the defendant's faulty response. The defendant then craved judgment since he had offered to put himself on the country, “which is an acceptable and adequate answer" (responsio satis sufficiens et acceptabilis) and the plaintiff had refused the offer.

86. PRO SC2/211/112 m. 5.

87. Maitland revealed his doubt in translating the phrase “xij. jur’ curie” in a court roll entry of 1290 as “[the?] twelve jurors of the court.” Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 77.

88. In the Ramsey court rolls, when the jurors acted as a jury of presentment, the roll reads jurati (or prejurati) presentant (or dicunt). See PRO SC2/179/20 mm. 4d, 5d. When they acted as a trial jury, giving verdicts in individual disputes, the court roll entry reads convictum est per juratos. Ibid. SC2/194/4, passim. The two formulae provide a way to distinguish between ex officio criminal proceedings and private civil ones.

89. In these instances, convictum est per vicinos juratos replaces convictum est per (pre)juratos in the court rolls, PRO SC2/179/4 mm. 1, 3, 179/5 m. 1, 179/9 m. 3, 179/10 m. 8.

90. Jurors’ names were often listed for each separate inquest. Although there was considerable duplication of personnel among inquests taken at the same court, correspondence between the memberships of presenting jury and trial jury rarely exceeded seventy-five percent. The discrepancy probably insured, as on the Ramsey Abbey manors, that trial juries made allowance for the special knowledge of near neighbors when it was required.

91. Many estates, such as the Abbot of Boxley's manor at Boxley, Kent, or the royal manor of Framsden, Suff., did not employ a jury of presentment at ordinary, three-weekly manor courts, although trial juries were much used in the same courts. PRO SC2/180/6-25,203/83. The correspondence on the Ramsey Abbey estates between juries of presentment and trial in manor courts, and the occasional duplication of jury personnel elsewhere, was not a necessary relationship.

92. Instances of trial juries stating customs are so common in manorial court rolls that it is pointless to cite examples. For a trial jury describing a change in custom, ten years earlier, relating to the status of bastards, see Massingberd, Ingoldmells, 112.

93. For example, Dale, Chalgrave, 42 (1300) (lord can force villein to take up villein tenement); Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.7.22 “Winslow Court Book”), fol. 4r (1329) (when tenant by curtesy dies, heriot is owed, as well as at wife's death), fol. 11v (age of majority for inheriting land is twenty years for males, sixteen for females; if inheritance falls to heiresses, it is not partible but should descend to firstborn); Hertford County Record Office, Hertford County Council Records 65498-65528 “Norton Court Book”), fol. 21r (villeins can demise, sell, lease land to each other, to free men also with lord's permission).

94. See Baildon et al., Wakefield 1:213-14 (1285) (graves of six villages); British Library, Add. Roll 28047 (Mapledurham, Hants. 1368) (twelve of the better and more discrete of the whole homage).

95. At Wakefield, Yorks., inquests of fewer than twelve were occasionally taken in both personal pleas and land disputes, For example, Baildon et al., Wakefield 1:169, 171 (11), 2:73-74 (9), 3:46 (9), 5:174 (6) (all post-1275, despite judgment of that year declaring inquest often insufficient, ibid. 1:46). Deviations from the dozen at Wakefield, however, more often involved more jurors than fewer, for example, ibid. 1:1-2 (15), 118-19 (41) (called attinctus, but apparently jury of first instance); ibid. 3:101-2 (24).

96. John of Doncaster was the Earl Warenne's estate steward and presided in some of the Wakefield courts from 1297 to 1307. In 1323 he was appointed steward of all manors in Yorkshire that had belonged to John de Warenne and that, after the battle of Boroughbridge, had been forfeited by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster (who had been enfeoffed by John de Warenne). Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1321-1324, 244. He began holding the Wakefield courts again in March, 1323. For his royal judicial career between 1307 and 1323, see Foss, E., Judges of England (London, 1851), 3:251Google Scholar.

97. In 1298, when the verdict of an inquest he had purchased in a dispute about the ownership of some sheep had gone against him, a litigant and his wife were amerced not only for a false claim, but also for defaming the-jurors. He maliciously attributed to a particular juror a willingness to perjure himself on any inquest for a gallon of ale, while she declared that all the jurors had perjured themselves. Baildon et al., Wakefield 2:46. A more prudent course for them to have followed, had they any right to their case, would have been to purchase an attaint, which would hardly have cost them more than their abuse of the jurors.

98. Ibid. 2:59, 70-71, 3:21, 42, 5:174. Occasional variations are found, for example, ibid. 2:78 (twenty-four to attaint sixteen).

99. Baildon et al., Wakefield 2:71, 3:42, 5:174. See also R. B. Pugh, Imprisonment in Medieval England, 15. Imprisonment lasted until the prisoners made fine for their release. If they were quick enough, they could avoid going to prison at all. In addition to this penalty, further payments were sometimes required of a jury that had been attainted: amercement for a false claim, or even payment of the plaintiffs damages. Baildon et al., Wakefield 2:70, 5:174.

100. In a lawsuit from 1330, the tenant refused to answer the charge against him as he had been awarded the tenement in dispute by the verdict of an attaint of twenty-four jurors on an inquest of twelve who had sworn a false oath. He argued that it was consonant neither with the law nor with the custom of the manor to inquire further in pleas of land than by an attaint of twenty-four, and he sought judgment. The demandant replied that “with land held in bondage at the will of the lord, the lord of his special grace, notwithstanding the common law, can grant to such tenants at will an attaint on an attaint to inquire more truly regarding the tenant's right.” He produced letters close from the Earl to the steward commanding the summons of forty-eight men, and the attaint was ordered. Baildon et al., Wakefield 2:161-62.

101. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, xlv-xlvii.

102. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 21-40.

103. Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 133-34. During the fourteenth century, difficult judgments were sometimes reserved by the court to the lord and his council, for example, British Library, Add. MS. 40625 “Park Court Book”), fols. 77v-78r (1337). See Levett, “Baronial Councils and their Relation to Manorial Courts,” Studies in Manorial History, 28. As this practice grew more frequent, the suitors gradually lost their stake in giving judgments in difficult or unusual cases.

104. Direct evidence of this phenomenon is occasionally to be found. In a charter of 1314, Edward Burnel grants a right of essoin to the suitors of his court: “Sachier nous auer graunte e par cest escrit conferme pur nous e pur nos heirs e pur nos assignes a tuz iurs a touz nos hommes du maner de Conedoure e a touz ceauz que en lur lieu vendrount apres eux, qil se puissent assoiner de nostre court de Conedoure vne foithe cum pur suite de court a en chesqun manere de play en la dite court sourdant’.” Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA, George Frisbie Hoar Papers—Special Collection, 1314 Edward Burnel. Payments to relax the requirement of suit of court (pro relaxanda secta curie) begin to appear in the first half of the fourteenth century. For example, British Library, Add. Roll 1712 (Horningtoft, Norf. 1329).

105. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law 2:625-26, 654-55; Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence, 86; Dawson, History of Lay Judges, 122-26, 196.

106. For example, PRO SC2/179/6 m. 7 (King's Ripton, Hunts., 1295) (members of sworn inquest declared that they did not know who should pay rent of four pence annually that bailiffs were seeking from Thomas son of Simon, for meadowland recently purchased); British Library, Add. Roll 28050 (Mapledurham, Hants., 1379) (adjournment “for inquiring better” given in trespass plea concerning depasturing because court could not agree on verdict); PRO SC2/174/30 m. 1 (Widford, Herts., 1275) (inquest of whole vill, asked whether John Miller and his ancestors were of free birth and could marry freely without lord's leave, replied that they did not know and requested adjournment until next court, with search of rolls in meantime, which revealed that he was villein). At Norton, Herts., in 1307, Richard son of Thomas Hawise sought as his inheritance after the death of his father a villein holding held by John Bate, who had no hereditary right but had been admitted by the lord. An inquest taken to learn how the land came out of Thomas's hand to be held by John Bate said that a long time before, Thomas let the land lie waste and the lord took the holding into his hand for rent and services in arrear. For almost thirty years, the lord offered the land many times to Thomas and a son of his called John and to Thomas's heirs, for the payment of the rent and services, but none of them ever sought the land. After the passage of so much time, therefore, the lord granted the holding in villeinage for the accustomed services to John Bate and his heirs. Asked whether Thomas or John his heir were alive when John Bate entered the land, the jurors replied that they did not know and sought an adjournment to have aid of the court rolls. Norton Court Book, fol. 17r.

107. That jurors were supposed to be witnesses did not guarantee that they had first-hand knowledge of the facts in dispute. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law 2:628.

108. See Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 126-27, for a penalty imposed when jurors who lacked knowledge refused to give a verdict and left the court.

109. For example, at Park, Herts., in 1351, when asked in the aftermath of the plague whether a particular piece of land was villeinage or not, the jurors said they did not know, but had an adjournment to find out. Later they came and said that so far as they knew (super eorum intellectu), the land was free. Because the steward doubted their verdict, the rolls were to be searched. Park Court Book, fol. 98v.

110. For example, Baildon et al., Wakefield 2:52, 78, 203. It is impossible to assess the accuracy of such verdicts, other than to note that they were accepted as authoritative in court.

111. But see Dawson, History of Lay Judges, 205 “…memories then were long”).

112. Douce, a victim of a harsh custom, was disinherited. PRO SC2/179/16 m. 10d.

113. Park Court Book, fols. 77v-78r, cited by Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 157.

114. For an instance of a jury of customary tenants being proved wrong over whether or not a particular service was due at Chatham Hall, Essex, in 1321, by reference to a recorded manorial extent, see Clark, A., “Serfdom on an Essex Manor, 1308-1378,” English Historical Review 20 (1905): 483.Google Scholar

115. Reliance on documents had many manifestations, including proffers of specialty to bar compurgation; reference to custumals, originally compiled from the verdicts of juries, to replace inquests of the suitors of the court in stating usages of tenure, customs and services on many manors; vouchers of the court rolls to supersede trial by jury in many different contexts; and copy of court roll to evidence title to customary land beginning in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

116. For example, Park Court Book, fol. 75v “Et de hoc ponunt se ambo panes tam super inquisicionem quam super recordum rotulorum”) (1336).

117. Levett, , Studies in Manorial History, 164.Google Scholar

118. British Library, MS Stowe 849 “Codicote Court Book”), fol. lOv. No judgment is to be found in the court book; probably the case was settled.

119. British Library, Add. MS. 40167 “Barnet Court Book”), fols. 54v, 55r-v.

120. "Alicia Dykes reddidit sursum in manus domini totum tenementum suum quod tenuit inter tenementum Willelmi Josep et tenementum Roberti Russel. Et Robertus Russel dat domino xij denarios pro predicto tenemento cum pertinenciis tenendo sibi et suis faciendo inde servicia debita et consueta.” Barnet Court Book, fol. 44r.

121. Winslow Court Book, fol. 25r-v “Ad quod scrutatis rotulis reperitur contrarium supradicte allegations in eodem placito prout reperitur, fratris R. de Saunford termino Pasche anno Regis nunc primo in placitum inter Johannam que fuit Willelmi le Spicer et Johannam Edward”).

122. Winslow Court Book, fol. 26r.

123. Dale, Chalgrave, 46.

124. Park Court Book, fol. 88v; Codicote Court Book, fol. 52v; Baildon et al., Wakefield 4:4, 26. Courts did not have to accept private documents. See, for example, PRO SC2/179/10 m. 1d (Burwell, Cambs., 1299) (Abbot of Ramsey refused to admit tenant's heir to ancestor's tenement because he did not agree with terms of heir's muniments).

125. Levett, , Studies in Manorial History, 149.Google Scholar

126. The earliest example encountered in the Wakefield court rolls is from 1296 (Baildon et al., Wakefield 1:252), but by the second decade of the fourteenth century, vouchers of the rolls were common there.

127. For examples of payments for enrollments, see PRO SC2/181/47 m. 1 (Lewisham, Kent, 1298) “pro ista commitanda in rotulis ad perpetuum recordum inde habendum”); British Library, Add. MS. 6057 “Croxley Court Book”), fol. 5r (1263); Codicote Court Book, fols. 12v (1274), 20v (1291).

128. For example, PRO SC2/177/47 m. 10 (King's Langley, Herts., 1296) (defendant vouched record of court of Berkhamsted, Herts., to quash plea of trespass for which he had already been sued elsewhere).

129. This is part of the explanation (in addition, of course, to the drastic decline in population from recurrent waves of plague) for the lower incidence of jury trial in the second half of the fourteenth century.

130. 5 Edw. II, 17 Edw. II, and 3 Edw. III. The word copia first appears in a lawsuit of 15 Edw. II. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 139 n. 1, 152.

131. Baildon et al., Wakefield 3:149, 4:192, 5:15, 23.

132. This procedure is illustrated well by a court roll entry of 1387 from a manor owned by the nuns of Wix Priory in Tolleshunt Major, Essex. John, son of John Pollard of Goldangre came into court to claim a weir (gurges) called the Sandweir, which Sarah of Burghill, quondam Prioress, along with her convent, had granted to his father in tail. He showed his copy, it was inspected by the court, and John was granted the weir. PRO SC2/173/94 “Et quia videtur per inspeccionem dicte copie rotulo curie eiusdem concordantis predictus Johannes filius eiusdem Johannis Pollard ius habet in predicto gurgite hire hereditario ad voluntatem domine etc.”).

133. PRO SC2/188/66 mm. 2, 5. The burning of court rolls during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 is often explained by reference to information they contained, which the peasants wanted to destroy, about disabilities of status and onerous conditions of tenure. It is ironic that the burning also destroyed the best proof of peasants’ title to land, forcing them back for a time to older, less efficient procedures of extensive litigation and the sworn inquest.

134. Oschinsky, D., ed., Walter of Henley, (Oxford, 1971), 264Google Scholar.

135. Milsom, Legal Framework, chap. 1. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century legislation, along with changes in the law of distress, effectively curtailed this aspect of private jurisdiction. The royal courts provided considerable diversity of remedies for lords to deal with recalcitrant tenants. Plucknett, T. F. T., The Legislation of Edward I (Oxford, 1949), chaps. 3, 4.Google Scholar

136. The general rule that a defendant could not be put to his proof by a plaintiff who did not produce suit bound manorial officers just as other plaintiffs. Chapter 38 of Magna Carta says, “Henceforth no bailiff shall put anyone to his law by his bare word, without the production of reliable witnesses.” Plucknett, T. F. T., The Medieval Bailiff (London, 1954), 12–13Google Scholar.

137. In the mid- and late fourteenth century, for example, individuals “presented” offenses on several manors in Cornwall—the parker, reeve, and village bailiff at Lostwithiel, the tithingman (decenarius) at Liskeard and Tintagel. PRO SC2/161/S, 161/7, 161/84 m. 2, 160/25 m. 5, 163/25 mm. 1, 3.

138. The selection process is obscure. Frequently presenting jurors were heads of tithings; for example, at Litlington, Cambs., in 1362, they were the eight chief pledges. PRO SC2/155/65 m. 11. At Hawkesbury, Glos.,in 1293, the four tithingmen were sworn to select other worthy men (fidedigni) to serve with them as presenting jurors. PRO SC2/175/41 mm. 10, 13, 13d. In all likelihood, the chief pledges ordinarily played a part in the selection of jurors; no evidence has been found to suggest that the jurors were chosen by an “election” of the community at large. Although the usual number of jurors came to be twelve, both smaller and larger juries of presentment were used frequently. On some occasions, a single jury was inadequate. For example, at Wakefield, in 1316, twin juries of twelve (inquisiciones gemminiate) were employed at a single tourn, “on account of common burglaries and the great number of thieves, as to which the truth cannot be ascertained.” Baildon et al., Wakefield 4:153.

139. At Broughton, Hunts., in 1288, the reeve and beadle were forgiven for not bringing the gospel book for swearing in the jurors. PRO SC2/179/5 m. 2d. Opposition to jury service frequently appears in manorial court rolls as refusal “to touch the book.” For the contents of the oath, see Beckerman, J. S., “The Articles of Presentment of a Court Leet and Court Baron, in English, c. 1400,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 47 (1974): 231Google Scholar.

140. PRO SC2/153/67m. 11 (Brightwaltham, Berks., 1294) (presenting jury described in court roll as “inquisitio facta per xij juratos de veritate dicenda super diversis articulis eis impositis per manum seneschalli”).

141. Bateson, M., “The English and Latin Versions of a Peterborough Court Leet, 1461,” English Historical Review 19 (1904): 526–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nichols, J. F., “An Early Fourteenth-Century Petition from the Tenants of Bocking to their Manorial Lord” Economic History Review 2 (1929-1930): 300–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

142. Nichols, “Fourteenth-Century Petition,” 305.

143. The possibility that feudal lords were trying to compel their free tenants to serve on juries of presentment at private views of frankpledge would go far to explain the appearance of the part of c. 22 of the Provisions of Westminster (1259), enacted in the Statute of Marlborough (1267), which repeated the rule that lords could not compel their free tenants to swear. It is commonly asserted that the purpose of this clause was further to prohibit private courts from hearing actions concerning freehold land by making it impossible for lords to empanel juries for the purpose.

144. The right to be judged by one's peers (and the corollary right not to be judged by one's inferiors) was deeply rooted in medieval English law, including chapter thirty-nine of Magna Carta, which provided that “no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land,” and the Leges Henrici Primi, which provided that “[e]ach person is to be judged by men who are of equal status… as himself?’ and that “No one of high status shall be condemned by the judgment of lesser men.” McKechnie, Magna Carta, 375-79; Downer, L. J., ed., Leges Henrici Primi, (Oxford, 1972), cc. 31, 7; 32, la, pp. 134–35.Google Scholar

145. Lennard, “Early Manorial Juries” 511-18.

146. Maitland, , Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, xxxvii n. 1.Google Scholar

147. The history of communal presentment of criminal matters in local courts antedates the Assize of Clarendon, although there is no evidence of uniformity in the composition of the bodies that actually made the presentments. Hurnard, N. D., “The Jury of Presentment and the Assize of Clarendon,” English Historical Review 56 (1941): 374–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 382 et seq. See also Green, T. A., “A Retrospective on the Criminal Trial Jury, 1200-1800,” Twelve Good Men and True, ed. Cockburn, J. S. and Green, T. A. (Princeton, 1988), 359, 363nGoogle Scholar.

148. H. Cam, “Suitors and Scabini,” in Liberties and Communities, 59; idem, "Manerium cum Hundredo,” ibid., 67-69.

149. Sutherland, Quo Warranto Proceedings, 3-4, 141-42.

150. These lists, which survive from the second half of the thirteenth century at the earliest, were summarized and analyzed by Hearnshaw, F. J. C., Leet Jurisdiction in England (Southampton, 1908), 43–71Google Scholar. The exception to the general rule about association with private courts is the list of articles in the Statute of Wales (1284), which imposed the sheriff's tourn in Wales. Although it does not imply an institutional relationship with a manor court, several articles seem to reflect proprietary economic concerns, particularly those relating to offenses in parks, warrens, and sheepfolds, and to theft of crops in autumn.

151. In addition to crimes both serious and trivial, matters of public concern, such as the operation of the frankpledge system, offenses such as the removal of boundary markers and the diversion of watercourses, and the use of false weights and measures appear in many of the formularies.

152. In the earliest rolls from the courts of the Bec manors, there is no suggestion of any jury of presentment. Several times offenses are disclosed by the suitors (curia presentat, curia presentavit), for example, illegal fence (1246), purpresture on lord's land (1246), tenant not in tithing (1246), fugitive villein (1247), carrying off geese (1248). Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 6, 7, 8, 16, 16. In these instances the judgment-giving function seems to have remained with the suitors.

153. As is suggested by the response “nescivit si fecit finem necne.” Printed in Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 327.

154. Examples of these offenses can be found in entries in the St. Albans court books prior to 1265.

155. Maitland, for example, wrote that “it was for the good of the peace that there should be as much presentment of offenders as possible.” Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, xxxvi.

156. See, for example, Dawson, History of Lay Judges, 204 “Who should object if the community wished to use public condemnation and money fines to protect and purge itself?”); DeWindt, E. B., Land and People in Holywell-cum-Needingworth (Toronto, 1972), 213, 220Google Scholar (stating that Holywell juries were not in the control of a “narrowly limited oligarchy”). For the use of presentment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Orwin, C. S. and Orwin, C. S., The Open Fields, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1967), 127–31Google Scholar.

157. As Maitland put it, “[w]holesale the feudal lords grasped at this new procedure.…” Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, xxxvi.

158. For example, at Bocking Hall, Essex, in the early fourteenth century, the tenants opposed the extension of presentment to the halimotes as a breach of custom. While according to the custom of the manor an inquest of presentment should have been taken once a year “and not more than once in each year,” the overly zealous steward compelled the tenants to make presentments at each court, “just as if they were all villeins.” Nichols, “Fourteenth-Century Petition,” 306. At Pinhoe, Devon, as late as 1397, one Thomas Germyn was amerced for asserting that the tenants were neither accustomed nor obliged to present offenses, except at the law-day. PRO SC2/168/1 m. 15d.

159. Barnet Court Book, fol. 24v.

160. Ibid. The name first entered is one of the men who had been amerced two shillings at the previous court. Parts of the Barnet dispute are noted briefly in Levett, A. E., “Courts and Court Rolls of St. Albans Abbey,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th sen, vol. 7 (1924), 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 146-47.

161. Bamet Court Book, fol. 25v.

162. Ibid., fol. 26r.

163. Ibid., fol. 33v. An abbreviated version of the fourteenth-century articles from the St. Albans formulary book (Cambridge University Library, MS. Ee.IV.20) is printed in Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 102-3.

164. Barnet Court Book, fol. 36r.

165. Records survive from semiannual courts from all but the fourth year, from which one court is missing. Barnet Court Book, fols. 54r-57v. There is some continuity from the earlier opposition in the names of the non-jurors.

166. This excuse was a common justification for refusal to swear as a presenting juror. For other examples, see Ratcliffe, S. C., ed., Elton Manorial Records (Roxburghe Club, 1946), 5 (twice) (1279)Google Scholar.

167. Statutes of the Realm 1:24.

168. Barnet Court Book, fol. 57v.

169. Ibid., fol. 60r.

170. Ibid., fol. 61v.

171. Even after the defeat of the villagers, however, when by their service on juries of presentment the men of Chipping Barnet finally acknowledged the lord's right to demand jury service from them, they continued to dispute with the cellarer about what they were obliged to present. At a court in October, 1334, they said that they did not then have to present defaults, but only at two courts during the year. The cellarer did not accept this contention, but respited the matter until he could muster his proof at the next court. No conclusion is to be found in the court book. Ibid., fol. 61r-v. The habit of opposition persisted at Bamet, for the October halimotes of 1352 and 1353 saw two instances of individuals again refusing to serve as presenting jurors. Both were amerced; the court president appears to have taxed at least the second amercement himself. Ibid., fols. 86r, 87v. Walsingham notes that the villeins of Barnet were in league with the villeins of St. Albans and came quickly to oppose the Abbey in 1381, at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt. H. T. Riley, ed., Historia Anglicana, Rolls Series (1863-64), 1:467-73.

172. In the treatises De Placitis et Curiis Tenendis, ca. 1269 (printed in Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 13) and one version of the Curia Baronum, ca. 1265-80 (printed in ibid., 6-8, part one of x), the ordinary range of business of a manor court is covered comprehensively, but only a very restricted range of business, the criminal and public business of the view of frankpledge, is dealt with by presentment. In the former treatise, a lawsuit for trespass in the lord's meadow or pasture is brought by the hayward, and the bailiff's oath shows that part of his duty was to report alienations of seignorial rights by his predecessors. Ibid., 76, 77. In the latter treatise, manorial officers are the plaintiffs in eighteen of twenty-six specimen pleas: the bailiff (twelve), the hayward and forester (two each), and the parker and a “serjeant” (one each). All save three (breaches of the assizes of bread and ale and fish sold against the franchise of the vill, all sued by the bailiff) are obvious infringements of manorial custom or seignorial rights.

173. Nichols, F. M., ed., Britton (Oxford, 1865), 1:177–85Google Scholar; Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., ed.,Fleta, Selden Society, vol. 72 (1953), 2:174–79Google Scholar; Whittaker, W. J., ed., The Mirror of Justices, Selden Society, vol. 7 (1893), 38–41Google Scholar.

174. Printed by Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction, 373-74, from Cambridge University Library, MS. Dd.VII.6, fol. 60a, col. 2.

175. Hearnshaw, Leet Jurisdiction,, 374, from Cambridge University Library, MS. Dd.VII.6, fol. 63a, col. 2 to fol. 63b, col. 1.

176. "Et puis de touz altres choses queux sont a presentier pur le seignur.” From Cambridge University Library, MS. Ee.IV.20, printed in Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 102-03. Levett dated the manuscript from 1382-88, Studies in Manorial History, 101, while Maitland dated the text from 1342, from the date of the specimen court that it includes. Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 15.

177. Beckerman, “Articles of Presentment.”

178. On some manors during the fourteenth century, presentment was used only at the semiannual plenary meetings, the view of frankpledge or great courts, and not at “three-weekly” courts. On others, presentment came to be used at most court meetings, great or small. For these reasons, the articles with which the jury was charged could vary considerably. On the estates of Crowland Abbey, where a jury of presentment came to be used regularly at all courts during the fourteenth century, F. M. Page found no distinction between the types of offenses presented at leets and hallmoots. Petty crimes and manorial offenses could equally well be presented at either type of court. Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 36. Records of other estates yield a different result, a distinction between subjects appropriate to presentment at leets and those appropriate to presentment at less exalted courts. At Norton, Herts., for example, in 1328, when the jurors presented that two men were fugitives and had removed their chattels from the lord's fee, no process was ordered, but the clerk recorded, “Let it be spoken of on the day of the view.” Norton Court Book, fol. lv.

179. Juries of presentment were inquests taken ex officio. They could not determine guilt in cases of capital crimes because the accused had not submitted to the verdict of the inquest.

180. An exception was when the offense presented was beyond the court's jurisdiction, or if the presentment concerned or charged freehold. Hale, M., History of the Pleas of the Crown, 2 vols. (London, 1800), 2:153–54Google Scholar. In contrast, according to Hale, presentments before royal justices with commissions of the peace, oyer and terminer and gaol delivery were ordinarily “not convictions, but only in the nature of informations.” Therefore, they were traversable “and conclude not the party or those claiming under him.”

181. For example, at Abbot's Langley, Herts., in 1329, the jurors presented that Agnes, daughter of Alexander Knight (Cneiht), had been married to a free man without the lord's permission. This was a serious offense that normally resulted, according to the custom of the halimote, in the confiscation of the tenement and the permanent exclusion of the woman and her heirs, in order to safeguard for the lord the services and incidents of villein tenure, which were jeopardized whenever a villeinage tenement was held or managed by a free man. The land was ordered seized, when Agnes came and said that no marriage contract had been made between them. The whole halimote confirmed her story, in effect overruling the verdict of the jury, and so the matter was respited. Abbot's Langley Court Book, fol. 36r. The jurors probably confused Agnes with another woman of the same name, for in the entry immediately following, it is noted that they presented Agnes, daughter of William Philip, for the same offense, marriage to a free man without the lord's leave. Since she had inherited her father's land, the penalty of confiscation and exclusion was duly imposed. Abbot's Langley Court Book, fol. 36v. Ordinarily when a person suffered loss or harm because of a false presentment, remedy lay in an action for damages against the jurors themselves. Nichols, Britton 1:183-84. See also Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 100. For example, at Park, Herts., in 1341, Simon Mayhew (Mayheu) complained that the jurors had presented falsely that he held a particular grove (grava) from the Abbot when in fact it was held entirely of the manor of Blackens from Thomas Lovot. Eventually the jurors acknowledged their error; they were amerced and Simon was awarded his damages. Park Court Book, fol. 83 v.

182. Exceptions are extremely rare. At Brightwaltham, Berks., in 1314, two men waged their law against the tithingman and tithing to deny presentments. One failed, but the other, John Gosselyn, who had been presented for smoking a swarm of bees out of an oak tree, making off with and misappropriating the bees, made his law sixthhanded. The tithingman and tithing therefore were amerced for a false presentment. PRO SC2/153/68 mm. 5, 5d. These are the only instances of compurgation permitted in answer to a presentment encountered by the author.

183. Exceptions to this generalization can be found very rarely. In 1355 at Barnet, Herts., the jurors presented Richard Hunter (Hont’) for unjustly vexing the lord's tenants in various courts to their damage. Asked about this in open court, Richard denied everything, asserting that he was not guilty. He put himself on an inquest, which was sworn and pronounced him guilty. Barnet Court Book, fol. 91r.

184. For a denial of a tenurial obligation, at Bramfield, Herts., in 1320, the jurors presented Hugh Palmer and his daughter for arrears of one pennyworth annual rent for the previous twenty-five years. Order was given to distrain the landholding for the rent, when Hugh came and sought the record of the court roll to show that he owed nothing but service at one alebedrepe. Hertford County Record Office, Council Records 40702-40705 “Bramfield Court Book”), fol. 22v. As for incidents of villein status: Two men were presented for marriage without leave (that is, non-payment of merchet) in Park and Abbot's Langley in 1327. Both claimed to be “free and of free condition.” The former was proved free (the record does not tell how) and the demand for merchet was annulled; the latter's case was respited until the custumary of the manor was consulted. Park Court Book, fol. 65r; Abbot's Langley Court Book, fol. 14. The same answer, the claim of freedom, also was used in 1339 by a Bramfield man whose daughter was presented for leyrwite. Bramfield Court Book, fol. 7v.

185. Presentments that a relief (gersumma) for a particular tenement had not been paid were occasionally answered in this manner, for example, Norton Court Book, fol. 14v; Winslow Court Book, fol. 7r, as were presentments that certain villagers had married without paying merchet, for example, Hertford County Record Office, Council Records 40700-40701 “Sandridge Court Book”), fol. 31r; Winslow Court Book, fol. 7r; Abbot's Langley Court Book, fols. 21v, 33v.

186. The same type of plea could occasionally be used to rebut other presentments. At Cashio, in 1360, when a man was presented for making waste in his tenement, he said that the enrollment of the grant of the land exonerated him of its wasted condition. The court rolls, when searched, did not acquit him of the burden of the maintenance of the buildings on his land; therefore he was amerced and ordered to repair the waste. British Library, Add. MS. 40626 “Cashio Court Book”), fols. 81v, 82r. At a court in Abbot's Langley, also in 1360, John Stonhard was presented for having a hand-mill in which he ground malt. Confronted with the accusation (inde occasionatus), John said that he had a record of the court roll that permitted him to grind malt as well as oat meal, and he asked permission to show his record at the next court. His request was granted. John did not appear at the next court, and an order to seize his hand mill was repeated in the court records for the next fifteen years. Abbot's Langley Court Book, fol. 44r and passim.

187. No document or record could prove that Hugh did not cut down the lord's oak tree, that Hugh's cows did not eat the lord's corn, that Hugh's wife Alice did not abuse Ralph with opprobrious words, or that Ralph did not strike Alice over the head with a poker in the heat of an argument.

188. Nichols, Britton 1:183-84.

189. Traverses of presentments involving freehold were naturally those most likely to come within the purview of the royal courts. Hale's theory that they were the only answers permitted to presentments in local courts (aside from jurisdictional exceptions), all others being conclusive, is neither supported by the medieval legal practitioners’ literature nor borne out by the court rolls themselves.

190. Milsom, S. F. C., “Law and Fact in Legal Development,” University of Toronto Law Journal 17 (1967): 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

191. A yearbook report from the late fifteenth century affirms the old principle that the suitors were the judges in a court baron, but counsel argued that the steward was as much the judge as the suitors, for the steward would render judgment. “Moy semble qe le seneschal est auxibien judge come les sutors etc. car il donera judgement, etc.”). YB Mich. 6 Edw. IV, pl. 9.

192. Stephenson, C., “The Beginnings of Representative Government in England,” Medieval Institutions (Ithaca, 1954, repr. 1967), 31Google Scholar.

193. See DeWindt, , Holywell-cum-Needingworth, 208–234.Google Scholar

194. For example, at Wakefield, amercements for concealment fell on the township (villata). Baildon et al., Wakefield 1:189. When the jurors did not present the informations of the township, they were liable for the amercement. Ibid.: 43.

195. Nichols, Britton 1:183-84; Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 358; British Library, Add. Roll 28043d. (Mapledurham, Hants.).

196. Codicote Court Book fol. 53v. (1331); Cashio Court Book, fol. 52v; (1332); Park Court Book, fol. 98r (1351).

197. Cashio Court Book, fol. 88v (1370).

198. For example, Codicote Court Book, fol. 45v (1332) (electing reeve-rent collector).

199. The earliest example is from 1259. Norton Court Book, fol. 5r. It became a common practice during the reigns of the second and third Edwards.

200. Page, Estates of Crowland Abbey, 67.

201. In the sixteenth-century court rolls of Redgrave, Suff., the jurors of the court leet were collectively referred to as the homagium in the court baron aspects of the court's business. Dawson, History of Lay Judges, 210, 216.

202. Ault, Private Jurisdiction in England, 163-65; Sutherland, D. W., “Mesne Process Upon Personal Actions in the Early Common Law” Law Quarterly Review 77 (1966): 482–96Google Scholar; Maitland, , Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, 107 (King's Ripton, Hunts., 1288)Google Scholar.

203. The initial plaint followed by the three stages of process (three summonses, three essoins, and three distraints) followed by trial and judgment yield eleven court sessions.

204. As an early sixteenth-century letter from an estate administrator to Lady Isabel Plumpton inquired, “Let me know how you will have your corts ordered, whether you will have them kept one or two times in the year.” Stapleton, T., ed., Plumpton Correspondence, Camden Society, vol. 4 (1839), 255Google Scholar.

205. These figures have been extracted from the Great Horwood rolls in the muniments of New College, Oxford (New College Muniments 3912-3918). I wish to thank the Warden and Bellows of New College for permission to examine these documents.

206. Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 21.

207. See McKisack, M., The Fourteenth Century, 1307-1399 (Oxford, 1959), 324–31Google Scholar, for commutation of labor services generally and 336 for the problem of collecting rent.

208. Stapleton, Plumpton Correspondence, 32.

209. Maitland, , Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, xxxvi.Google Scholar

210. Baildon et al., Wakefield 1:50.

211. Ibid. 4:46.

212. British Library, Add. Roll 28034.

213. PRO SC2/199/5 m. 2

214. Bateson, “Peterborough Court Leet,” 528.

215. Codicote Court Book, fol. 41v.

216. See Sutherland, Assize of Novel Disseisin, 175.

217. Plucknett perceived the same phenomenon in damage claims in indictments before the justices of the peace. Justices of the peace were not competent to award damages; nonetheless occasional damage claims show that the indictments were frequently the outcome of bills from aggrieved parties. Plucknett, T. F. T., “A Commentary on the Indictments,” in Proceedings Before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Putnam, B. H. (London, 1938), clvii–clviiiGoogle Scholar.

218. Sandridge Court Book, fol. 26r; Norton Court Book, fol. 10v, printed in Levett, Studies in Manorial History, 335.

219. See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law 2:406-7.

220. For example, see Baildon et al., Wakefield 5:114.

221. PRO SC2/155/65 m. 1 “contra pacem venit vi et armis ad domum Johannis Chaudewyn’ et Henricum Brunne ibidem imprisonavit et ei maxima enormia intulit videlicet in aquam ibidem fugavit ita quod prope mersus fuit et vix mortem evasit etc.”).

222. PRO SC2/153/67 m. 8 “Set dicunt quod ad hoc provocatus fuit quia dicit quod invenit earn noctanter stando desuper muros suos scrutando secreta que faciebat in domo suo et preter hoc verbis contumeliosis insultabat eum imponendo ei diversa crimia quod est manifeste contra pacem”).

223. PRO SC2/169/27 m. 2.

224. Baildon et al., Wakefield 4:14, 30, 31, 40.

225. Massingberd, Ingoldmells, passim.

226. PRO SC2/156/12, 13.

227. Information derived from New College Muniments 3912-3915.

228. Stapleton, Plumpton Correspondence, 32.

229. Plucknett, “Commentary on the Indictments,” clix.

230. James, F. Jr, and Hazard, G. Jr, Civil Procedure, 3d ed. (Boston, 1985), 297.Google Scholar

231. The mid-fifteenth-century chronicler John Hardyng sarcastically commented, “The law is lyke vnto a Walshmannes hose,/To eche mannes legge that shapen is and mete;/So mayntenours subuerte it and transpose,/Thurgh myght it is full low layde vndyr fete,/And mayntnanse vp in stede of law complete;/All, if law wolde, thynge were by right reuersed,/For mayntenours it may noght bene reherced.” Kingsford, C. L., ed., “The First Version of Hardyng's Chronicle, English Historical Review 27 (1912): 750Google Scholar.

232. See generally, Bellamy, J., Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London and Toronto, 1973)Google Scholar; Lander, J. R., Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth-Century England (London, 1969)Google Scholar.

233. Genovese, E. D., Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York, 1972, repr. 1976), 25–26Google Scholar.

234. For example, PRO SC2/176/35 m. 2d (Bunshill, Herefs., 1345) (assault on steward, wounding him with knife); ibid. SC2/204/68 (Merstham, Surr., n.d.) (petition complaining of unjust distraint by bailiffs); ibid. SC2/171/49 (Claret, Essex, ca. 1357-58) (same); Maitland and Baildon, Court Baron, 141 (Littleport, Cambs., 1325) (complaints against hayward).

235. See Hilton, R. H., “Conflict and Collaboration,” in The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), 54–73Google Scholar; idem, “Peasant Movements in England Before 1381,” Economic History Review, 2d ser. 2 (1949).

236. For example, Westminster Abbey Muniments, 14548d (Halton, Lines.) “Halton present’ quod donaciones quas Ricardus filius Stephani fecit Roberto filio suo de tenementis in Halton facte sunt fraude et non bona fide”).

237. Since conveyance by surrender and admittance was always a public act, customary tenure never had the problems that could arise from secret feoffments. See Plucknett, Concise History, 615-16.