Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/205

 1920 BARONY AND THANAGE 197 quite easily and naturally if only we recognize that in England as in Normandy barony was an office to which were attached rights of public justice. To show how the adoption of this definition of barony would assist in solving some of the problems connected with the rise and growth of parliament is outside the scope of this paper. It must suffice to show what light is thrown by it on the vexed question of the distinction drawn in Magna Carta between greater barons who were to be summoned to the king's council personally, and lesser barons who were to be summoned through the sheriff. Turning back to the northern baronies, we notice that far more extensive franchises belonged to some than to others. The lord of Coupland, for instance, besides infangthef claimed all pleas of the Crown and the return of all writs without exception ; his seneschal performed all the duties and had all the powers of a sheriff ; his constable acted as coroner ; ^ his court was a ' curia militaris ' ; ^ the shire-court had no jurisdiction within the liberty,^ which even appeared as a separate area in the rota of the Itinerant Justices in 1176 and 1184 ; * the sheriff could not enter it for any purpose ; all writs had to be addressed to the lord, who made all attachments, even for felony ; ^ and when the men of the liberty were required to go in the king's army a separate mandate had to be sent to the lord.^ To all intents and purposes, indeed, Coupland was a shire, and wa*s actually so called in 1189.' Now, Coupland was only one of a group of lordships created by the Conqueror and his sons between 1069 and 1093 to protect the northern march against the Scots and to serve as bases for attack.^ Administrative districts, associated each with the custody of a royal castle,® in which the lord had all the power of a sheriff, if not of an earl,^'' they were in fact castel- laries, and in the case of Clitheroe, Pontefract,^^ and Richmond ^^ 1 Plac. de Quo Warr. pp. 112-13. " Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. II. ' So late as 1840 the county court of Cumberland had no jurisdiction within the honors of Allerdale and Coupland {Returns of Courts of Requests, &c., p. 18). ' Plac. de Quo Warr. p. 112. array to the lords of honors continued in the Marches down' to 1386 {ante, xxxii. 487). ' Bain, i, no. 198. Tickhill, Conisburgh, Hallamshire, Lancaster, Kendal, Allerdale, Carlisle, and Durham. Craven, and Richmondshire ; Hunter, South Yorkshire). " Alice de Romilli was often called Countess of Coupland (Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. II). " In a charter granted to the burgesses of Pontefract in 1194, Robert de Lacy freed them from all tolls ' in terris meis pertinentibus ad castellariam Pontefract et ad castellariam Cliderhoe ' (Ballard, English Borough Charters, p. 193). ^^ Called ' Earl Alan's castellaria ' in the charter granting Allerton to the bishop of Durham (Domit. A. VII).
 * Pipe Roll in Vict. County Hist., Cutnberland, i. 310.
 * e. g. in 1258 (Bain, i, no. 2103). The practice of sending separate commissions of
 * The list includes, besides Coupland, Richmond, Clitheroe, Skipton, Pontefract,
 * All of them as a matter of fact had as caput a pre-Conquest burh (Whitaker,