THE MEETING PLACE 203
following Saturday. Thou bailiff of C. on the following Monday.
Farewell.1
While it was generally agreed by law that the court must be
held somewhere upon the manor itself, and at a fixed place,2 local
custom determined the exact site. Some were held out of doors,
and Sir Laurence Gomme has well emphasised the importance
of this fact in his attempt to find in the early village communities
the forerunners of the manorial court.3 At Knyttington, Berks,
in the reign of Edward I, the court was held "in a certain green
place over against the house of Hugh de Gardin when it was fine,
and in wet weather, by leave of the bailiff in the manor house or
in that of one of the tenants".4 In Essex, the Moulsham Hall
Manor Court was held outside the manor house under the Court
Oak,5 and in the same county at Little Leigh it was held on
Court Hill.6 "At Eastbourne, the name of Motcombe Lane prob-
ably marks the hollow where the moots were held",7 while the
court of the Abbot of St Albans was held " under the ash-tree in
the middle court of the abbey"*8 Other usual places were the
lord's hall (from which is popularly derived the term Hallmote),
or even in the church itself.9 Myrc, in his Instructions for Parish
Priests, tells them not to allow the holding of courts in the sanc-
tuary,10 but despite this it was frequently done.11 In view of this
evidence it is a little difficult to accept Vinogradoff's sweeping
assertion: " In the feudal period the right place to hold the court
was the manorial hall. "l2 The " right place" was clearly the place
where long custom had decreed the meeting of the people should
be held, and anything else wras an assertion of the will of the lord.
When once the court had been summoned it was always neces-
sary for every serf to attend. Unless he had permission to absent
himself or sent a sufficient excuse for non-attendance, he was
1 Selden Soc. IV, 70. 2 Glanvill, op. tit. f. 19.
8 The Village Community, 264. * Paroch. Antiq. 474.
5 Essex Reviewy xx, 100.
6 Ibid, xxv, 4. For other examples see Blount, op. cit. 238-9; Hone, op. cit.
131; V.C.H. Durham, I, 299; Reg. Malm. (R.S.), II, 88, etc.
7 Med. Village, 70.
8 M. Paris, Chron. Majora (R.S.), vi, 438; and Roy. Hist. Soc. Trans. 4th
series, vn, 52, for Miss Levett's interesting account of this court.
9 Wakefield Rolls, I, 71, 148.
10 Op. cit. p. n.
11 This question is discussed at length in S. O. Addy*s Church and Manor.
12 Villainage, 367.