Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/105

 3. POLLOCK: ANGLO-SAXON LAW 91 from the Witan save that the king is not there in per- son,^ ...w [Some considerable time before the Norman Conquest, but how long is not known, bishops and other great men had acquired the right of holding courts of their own and taking the profits in the shape of fines and fees, or what would have been the king's share of the profits. My own belief is that this began very early, but there is no actual proof of it. Twenty years after the Conquest, at any rate, we find private jurisdiction constantly mentioned in the Domesday Survey, and common in every part of England : about the same time, j or shortly afterwards, it was recognized as a main ingredient in the complex and artificial system of feudalism. After having grown in England, as elsewhere, to the point of threatening the king's supremacy, but having happily found in Edward I a master such as it did not find elsewhere before the time of Richelieu, the manorial court is still with us in a form attenuated almost to the point of extinction. It is not material for the later history of English law to settle exactly how far the process of concession or encroachment had gone in the time of Edward the Confessor, or how fast its rate was increasing at the date of the Conquest. There can be no doubt that on the one hand it had gained and was gaining speed before " the day when King Edward was alive and dead," ^ or on the other hand that it was further accelerated and emphasized under rulers who were familiar with a more advanced stage of feudalism on the Continent. Butrthis very familiarity helped to make them wise in time; and^here was at least some foreshadowing of royal supremacy in exist- ing English institutions. Although the courts of the hundred and the county were not the king's courts, the king was bound by his oflice to exercise some general supervision over their,^ working. He was represented in the county court by the I sheriff; he might send out commissioners to inquire and report / how justice was done, though he could not interfere with the / firmed the rights of the see of Canterbury on Penenden Heath: but it was held under a very special writ from the king.
 * Such a court, after the Conquest, was that which restored and con-
 * The common form of reference in Domesday Book.