Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/185

 1920 BARONY AND THAN AGE 177 best to arrest the decay of their courts and save their justiciary- rights; but the king's triumph had been assured by the offer to those who used his courts of a more rational procedure and a more flexible and equitable justice than they could obtain in the communal and seigneurial courts, hampered as these were by an archaic procedure and a customary law that was ceasing to be adequate to the needs of a new age. The legal writers of the thirteenth century were therefore no longer concerned to define the jurisdiction of the local courts, but only to set forth the procedure by which cases could be brought into the king's courts and to expound the law by which they should be heard and determined there. In consequence, we find in the later treatises only occasional references to barons' courts. Such as they are, however, they point as clearly as the earlier law-books to a close association of rights of public justice with barony. Glanvill, for instance, tells us (viii. 11) that any baron, having in his court a plea which it was not able to determine, could bring his court into the king's court in order that it might have the advice of the latter, and that the king owed this to his barons of right {hoc debet Rex de iure baronibus suis). Are we not justified in inferring from this, not only that barons as such had courts, but also that if barons had a special right to claim the aid of the king's court in determining pleas belonging to their own courts, it was because their courts stood in a special relation to the king's court ? Bracton carries us further. Having written (iii (2). c. 32) that theft is a plea of the Crown determined sometimes in other courts, as in the shire-court and in barons' courts {in curiis baronum), and sometimes in tlie greater court of the king himself, he goes on (c. 35) : Let us see, therefore, what pleas belong to a court {ad curiam), and what to a shire. For there are certain barons and others, who have a liberty, that is to say, soc, sac, toll, team, infangthef, utfangthef. These may judge in their court if any one has been found within their liberty seized for some open theft, as hand-having and back-bearing, and he has been accused by sacborh ; because, unless he was in seisin, although some one sue against him as against a thief, it will not belong to a court, a hundred, or a wapen- take, to take cognisance of such thefts, nor to make inquisition concerning them by the country, whether one who was not seised was guilty or not, nor that battle shall be waged between any before seisin. . . . Likewise they may take cognisance of affrays and of men beaten or wounded, if felony and the Idng's peace be not appended. . . . Likewise of horses, oxen, and other animals wounded and maimed. Such a trespass can be amended by the neighbours. . . . Likewise they may take cognisance of debts which are demanded without a writ from the king and also of other things which are released without a writ. VOL. XXXV. — NO. CXXXVIII. N