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CHAPTER 2 SEIGNORIAL JURISDICTION SUMMARY TIJ, Mallor Frankp!edge A Manorial Court at WorkCounties , Palatinates, Honour! PAGE 95 97 98 99 Besides all this there is the second aspect of the courts we have just described, namely, the effect upon them of the local territorial magnate. Here we come to an extremely obscure and difficult subject. The sources of the authority of a great lord or baron can usually be traced with some confidence, but the rise of numerous petty lordships allover the country and their effect upon the existing communal organisation are matters of greater complexity.1 It is even difficult to classify the different sorts of power which a local lord could exercise at various times. In some cases the lord's jurisdiction was personal; in others it was territorial; and in many cases it is impossible to draw the line. On the one hand we have the development of the manor, and, closely connected with it, of the view of frankpledge; on the other it is dear that in many cases the whole organisation of the hundred court fell into private hands, and it is even fairly common to find that besides owning the hundred court the lord will even exclude the sheriff entirely, and instead ofthe sheriff's turn the lord's steward will hold a " court leet ". THE MANOR The manor as it existed in its typical form in the England of the thirteenth century is the product of a large number of different lines of development, some of them of very ancient date, which gradually converged to form one institution. One of its most striking features is the fact that all the tenants hold dependently of the lord of the manor. The origins of this may perhaps be sought in the tendency of small landowners to commend themselves and their land to some local magnate who seemed more likely to give them protection during such troubled times as the Danish invasions and the fairly constant wars between petty kingdoms. The weakness of the central power, too, undoubtedly promoted the growth of small local jurisdictions which were ready to undertake the task of repressing crime and organising military defence. This process was very probably hastened by the heavy burden oftaxation. 1 The difficulty is not connned to England: compare Chanteux, Mqyennes et bassesjusti(ts, in TravaUlt de Ja semaine d'histoire du droit nonnand (1938), 283. 95 96 THE COURTS AND THE PROFESSION In many parts of the world, even to-day, it has been found necessary to curb the activities of the capitalist who takes advantage of a small landowner who is unable to meet his taxes. In pre-Conquest days no such limits were ever thought of, and it is extremely probable that a great deal offree land was converted into land dependently held under the pressure of taxation. This did not mean that the poor owner was dispossessed; the change was principally to burden him with services in money, labour or products payable regularly, in return for which the lord took upon himself the public burdens of the property. In this connection it is essential to remember that taxation in the middle ages did not usually recur at regular intervals; the small man who had little economic reserve might therefore have to meet sudden liabilities quite beyond his means, although if those liabilities had been evenly spread over a length of years they wonld have been much less burdensome. These dependent tenants were, it seems, originally freemen; there is no evidence of any extensive number of slaves or bondmen in early Anglo-Saxon England. In the course of time, however, the burdens upon these tenants steadily increased; mOre and mOre labour becomes due, and the increasing arbitrariness of its exaction will emphasise the baseness of the tenure. By the time we get to DomesdayBook the development of serfdom has rapidly proceeded. On many manors it seems to be completed; on others a few faint traces offreedom still remain. and this is particularly so on the vast but scattered estates of the Crown. Throughout the middle ages these "sokemen of the ancient demesne" will be accounted as slightly higher than the villeins, and centuties later we shall find ambitious bondmen having lawyers search Domesday Book for them in the hope that it may turn out that their manor once formed part of the ancient demesne of the Crown. In the majority of cases, however, these once free tenants became servile. Besides this lordship...

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