Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/457

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS ,449 which remained in existence until the French Revolution ; but he sub- sequently states, without giving his evidence, that the castelry of Lille, like that of Ghent, included several pagi (p. 232). As for Saint-Omer, we hear of a donation made by the castellan in the year 1200 ' coram scabinis ... in generalibus placitis Sancti Audomari per manum loannis de Morbeke qui praesidebat mallis ' (p. 203). The use of the word mallum seems decisive as to the origin of the court ; the phrase generalia placita enables us to identify it with a tribunal which, according to a document of the year 1269, met three times a year at the house of the castellan. From a still later document, of the year 1339, it appears that this court consisted of the free men of the castelry. The castelry of Saint-Omer was a mere fragment of the Bogus Terouanensis ; but apparently the castellan had either contrived to keep the mallum of the pagus in his own hands, or had organized for his castelry a new mallum on the old pattern. The powers of the castellans in matters of haute justice are frequently mentioned in the documents, and appear to be fairly uniform in extent. In the Quatvx)r Officia the castellan of Ghent had jurisdiction over cases of homicide, mortal wounds, arson, house-breaking, rape, and theft (p. 71) ; and when the Jceure of 1241 reserves to the count in person the whole of the haute justice in the Pagus Wasiensis it is probable that we have here not a statement of the old custom, but an innovation (p. 72). In the castelry of Bruges murder, arson, rape, and theft are specified as cases pertaining to the mallum over which the castellan presides, and he divides the hannum fine of sixty shillings with the count (pp. 27-8). The castellan of Lille possessed, at all events in some parts of the castelry, all pleas of murder, rape, arson, robbery, homicide, and theft (pp. 150-1). The castellan of Saint-Omer had, throughout his castelry, the pleas of homicide, wounding, violent assault, insulting language, cattle-stealing (pp. 200-1). Concerning the judicial rights of the castellan of Douai we have no informa- tion. But it seems legitimate to conclude, with M. Blommaert, that the castellans in general possessed the haute justice. It follows that the castellan's office is not to be identified with that of the centenarius, though the latter is commonly called, like the castellan, a vicecomes. The castellan is in the first instance a military officer, on whom the count finds it con- venient to place the responsibility for justice, for police, for public and domanial administration within an area which may correspond to a pagus, to a group of pagi or to a centena, or which may be artificially delimited without regard to the traditional divisions of the country. Of the military functions exercised by the castellan there is not a great deal to be learned from the texts collected by M. Blommaert, for at the time when texts begin to be abundant the office is already in process of decay. There are only two cases in which we find a definite reference to the garrison of the castrum, and these are of early date. In 891 the garrison {castellani) of Saint-Omer offered a stout resistance to an inroad of the northmen (p. 182) ; in or about the year 1010 a contemporary describes the castellan of Ghent as a garrison commander 'qui curae praesidiali tunc praeerat ' (p. 42). By the year 1127 it would appear that the castle of Saint-Omer was normally left in the charge of watchmen {custodes) who were not soldiers (p. 182) ; and that at this date the castellan relied on the VOL. XXXV. — ^NO. CXXXIX. G g