Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/261

241 KINGS JUSTICE IN EARLY MIDDLE AGES. 241 feudal principles he is bound as lord to do justice — not royal but seigniorial justice, strictly speaking — to his men who hold lands of him and owe him service. The benefit of the King's ordi- nance must be expressly sought by those who want it ; if not, the old customary law takes its course. There was another function of the King's court which became prominent in the latter half of the twelfth century ; that of record- ing solemn compromises between parties. As early as the time of Henry I. we find the King arranging terms between eminent persons by his own authority or influence, and setting the terms down in a writ.^ Under Henry II. it became common for parties who had made their own terms to come before the King's judges to have them recorded. Such a record had all the value of a judg- ment in both certainty and efficacy ; so that it was worth while for purchasers of lands to simulate a dispute with their vendors for the purpose of having their " final concord " registered in authentic terms by the King's judges. Hence arose the form of " common assurance " which flourished for the best part of seven centuries under the name of a Fine. The details belong rather to the special history of the law of real property ; but there is no doubt that the services of the King's court to landowners in this respect, anticipating, as best might then be done, the modern devices of registration, were among its chief claims to the esteem and — what was perhaps more to the King's purpose — the resort and fees of suitors. Also the King's court appears from Henry XL's time, if not earlier, as guarding the subject's personal liberty — not merely freedom from wrongful imprisonment, but the condition of a free man. A strayed villein may be claimed by his lord in the county court; but if the man raises the defence or preliminary exception that he is a freeman and no villein by blood, and gives due security to the sheriff for prosecuting this claim, the proceedings must be removed into the King's court, and become in effect an action wherein the alleged villein is plaintiff and demands to have his freedom declared. Meanwhile he is to be treated as a free man ; 1 Cart. Rams. (Rolls ed.) i. 236-7, Nos. 155, 156, about A. D. mo, directed to the bishop of Lincoln and county of Huntingdon ; the form is " Sciatis me fecisse conven- tionem," etc. Thirteenth-century fines in the same book, e.g. No. 34, page 127, are in the form settled not later than Glanvill's time. See Glanv. viii. 23 : " Haec est finalis Concordia facta in curia domini regis," etc. And see P. & M. ii. 96. The official preservation of a counterpart appears to date from 1195.