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* CTJRETES. 069 CURIA REGIS. to their mode of wearing their hair). Cretan demigods who protected the infant Zeus from liis father L'ronus, wlicn the hitter swallowed his other children, by drowning his cries with the clanking of their brazen weapons. They are sometimes identiliod with the Corybantes. CURETON", kur'ton, William (1808-04). An English Syriac scholar. He was born at Westbury, became Canon of Westminster and rector of Saint ^Margaret's, Loudon, in 184i). He died in London, June 17, 18G4. His fame rests upon his Syriac studies: Corjjus Ignatianum (1849) ; Four Gospels in Syriac (1858) ; Ancient Syriac Documents Relative to the Earliest Establishment of Christianity in Edcssa and the Neighboriny Countries (1864). CURETU, kUo-ra'too. A tribe of Tapuyan stock occupying the country between the Ya- pura and Uaupcs Rivers, on the Brazil-Colombia border. The}' are a peaceable i)eopk', living in circular thatched houses and cultivating corn and manioc. The men paint their bodies and wear woolen girdles, but the women go entirely naked. CURFEW (OF. courfeu, corfeu, from cuevre- feu, coevrefeu, cox^refea, couvrefeu, cover-fire, from covrir, Fr. couvrir, to cover + feu, fire). In the Middle Ages, the ringing of a bell at night as a signal for the cessation of all outdoor life. The custom existed as a general police regulation, providing that after 8 o'clock all fires must be covered, and people keep within their houses. Polydore ^'crgil attributes to William the Conqueror the introduction of the curfew-bell into England, but the custom pre- vailed throughout Europe long before his time. There was so much ojiposition to the ordinance in England that Heniy I., in 1103, abolished it. The curfew is mentioned in English laws for more than a centuiy afterwards, but Blackstone says it refers to the time of night, and not to the ordinance. In parts of the United States and England the curfew-bell is still rung; in some towns of the former it is a police regulation to ^arn children off the streets. CU'RIA (Lat., court). In Roman history, the name of a division of a tribe in the constitu- tion of Romulus. The tribes being three and the divisions ten, there were thirty curi;c. This livision was a division of the populus to the e.xclusion of the plebs; and the assembly of the populus was called the comitia curiata. (See COMITIA.) Curia is also the name given to the Senate-house in ancient Rome. CURIA MURIA (koo'ri-a moo'rl-a) IS- XANDS. See Kukia ISIuria Islands. CU'RIA RE'GIS (Lat.), or King's Court. The ancient supreme court of England, known also as the Aula Regia, or Royal Hall (of Jus- tice). It was instituted by William the Con- queror as the instrument of his judici.al au- thority as supreme head of the State, and, exer- cising, as it did, a general and practically un- limited jurisdiction. It rapidly drew to itself all the important litigation of the kingdom. There had been no analofoiis tribunal under the Saxon kings, the popular county courts being in all ordinary cases supreme within their respec- tive counties (shires), and n centralized adminis- tration of justice being foreign to the senti- ments and traditions of the English people. Among the Xormans, however, it was the duke or king, and not the iieople, from wh(mi the stream of justice llowed, and llie fullowers of the Con- queror could hardly be expected to subject their causes- — their land-titles, their exactions, llieir controversies over tithes and ]irefermcMls — to the judgment of the i)opular trii)unals. U was in the County Court of the C(nuity of Ivent, how- ever, that a great ca-se^ involving the title to twenty-five manors, between the Archbishop of ''antcrbury and Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux and Karl of Kent, the half-brother of the King, was tried and adjudged in the tenth year of the Conqueror, and cases of this kind were not un- common in the earlier years of William's reign. But tlic older trib ials eiiuld not long cumpete with the inuuediate jurisdiction of the King, at first administered l)y him in person, and then by the chief justiciar, an ollicer of almost royal authority and importance. All important causes, pui)lic and jjrivatc, whether civil, criminal, or ecclesiastical, might be brought before the King's court in the first instance, and judgments of the county courts and other local tribunals were sub- ject to be ap])ealed and brought befcire it for review. Its disinterestedness contributed as much as its authority to invest it with the function of the principal court in the kingdom for the adjudication of private controversies, and the position of the justiciar, as the chief execu- tive and military officer, as well as the highest judicial officer in the kingdom, added to the weiglit of its judgments. The Curia Regis early became a peripatetic or circuit court, attending the King, or. in his absence from the realm, the justiciar, in hi's fre- quent progresses through the kingdom, and this, in the course of time, became a great abuse, amounting in many cases to a denial of justice. To remedy this, it was provided in ilagmi Charta (Sec. 17) that common pleas — that is, causes between private parties — should not follow the court, but be heard in a fixed place. The estalilishmcnt, thereupon, of a distinct Court of Common Pleas, in the reign of Henry 111., to sit permanently at Westminster, was the beginning of the dissolution of the Curia Regis. A sepai-ate division of the court, known as the King's Court of the Exchequer, had previously been created for determining questions relating to the royal exchequer. When in the same reign a Chancellor of the Exchequer was appointed as the permanent head of this department, it also became a sepa- rate and distinct tribunal. Finally, in tlic fifty- second year of Henry III., a third court, thence- forth knoMi as the Court of King's Bench, was created and took over the remaining jurisdiction of the Curia Re.gis. Thus, the latter, though never formally abolished, lost its importance and became obsolete, after two hundred vears of gi'eatness. The last justiciar of the King's Court, Robert de Brus, became the first Cliief Justice of the King's Bench in 12(18, and with him the line of great justiciars became extinct. From that time to the reform of the judicial system of Great Britain in 1873-7!), England lacked a single supreme court, but the model of the Curia Regis of the Norman kings was fol- lowed in the creation of the Supreme Court of Judicature, by which justice is adihinistered in England to-dav. See CoiiiT: Svpremr Coi-rt. Consult: Thorpe. The Aiirirnt T'lirs ntul In- stitutes of England (London, 1840) ; Stubbs,