198 THE MANOR COURT
he admitted that he only had the right of infangenethef, and that
this offence took place outside his territory. Further, when
pressed he also admitted that he proceeded to judgment without
the presence of the coroner. "Were you entitled to do this in
the absence of the Coroner?" asked Spigurnel. "No", was the
answer, and the justice ordered the prior to await judgment for
so grave an offence, for he had not only hanged a man for an
offence which was outside his jurisdiction, but also had done this
without sending for the coroner, so that a proper record might
have been made of the proceedings.
To overcome difficulties such as this, lords tried to get per-
mission to appoint their own coroners, but this privilege was but
sparingly granted.1 When we consider the difficulty of exercising
any supervision over the way in which lords would make use of
such a privilege, this is understandable. In general, the King
preferred to leave matters in charge of the royal coroners, of
whom there were several in each county. Their business was to
see that the royal rights were not infringed, and that the goods
of felons were not kept by the manorial lords, but duly paid over
to the Crown. They were charged to attend all the sessions of the
itinerant justices, and to bring with them their records for in-
spection. Hence, in part, their importance on the manor: their
account of the proceedings was held to be authoritative, for their
court was "a court of record"2—while the manorial court as
such could make no such important claim. The manorial courts,
however, had often acquired (legally or illegally) prescriptive
rights, especially in respect of certain royal franchises, and were
not easily supervised and controlled.
By the late thirteenth century there were two main types of
manorial jurisdiction in existence. The first of these arose directly
from the lord's ownership of the manor—it gave him certain
powers to administer his estate and to control his tenants. The
lawyers at the end of the sixteenth century made a distinction
between the court baron held for the free tenants of the manor,
and the court customary or Hallmote held for the unfree tenants,
but this distinction does not seem to have existed in actual prac-
1 P.Q.W. 24, 93,121,125,148,241, etc.; Rot. ParL 1,152 and n, 260; Rot.
Hund. i, 119 and 11, 169,280; and see Statutes of the Realm, 38 Ed. Ill, c. 6.
* See above and also Eyre of Kent, 133; Bracton, n, 511.