THE BUSINESS OF THE COURT 217
At the next two courts we have no mention of him, but in October
1402 he appears again to answer a number of complaints of much
the usual kind, and so it goes on. These details are worth re-
cording at length, not because of Bradwater's many failings, but
because they represent the common matter that was constantly
before the manorial courts.
We might, perhaps, classify the business possible at a Manor
Court possessing the fullest franchises and charters in this way.
First, we must distinguish the normal business naturally arising
from the economic administration of the manor. This would
include such items as the regulation and enforcement of labour-
services; the punishment of all types of trespass: the over-
crowding of the commons; the too frequent taking of wood or
turves, as well as ordinary trespass with cattle on the lord*s
meadows or in a neighbour's garden. It would also include the
transfer of all land held in villeinage, and even of free land if the
alienation thereof "would seriously impair the lord's interests*'.1
Regulations for the control of the open fields or the commons
would also fall within the economic sphere of the Court's
activities, and also the control of the serf's personal freedom to
marry, to take Orders, to leave the manor would be matters
vitally concerning the effective working of the lord's demesne and
the manor in general, and therefore matters of which the Court
would take cognisance. Similarly, offences against morality con-
cerned the lord: for, if an adulterer was successfully prosecuted
in the ecclesiastical court, he was fined and thus in theory lost
something which was his lord's. In the same way a woman
who lost her virginity was of less value, and was therefore fined
for depreciating her lord's property.2
Next come what we should now call minor offences against
law and order. The lord must obviously be allowed to deal with
these, for they affect the smooth working of manorial life,
although a strict view might find in this an invasion of the royal
franchise. Violence—so long as it was not too violent—was
punishable by the Court: attacks on manorial officers, threats and
mild assaults of neighbours, brawling, etc. are dealt with, as well
as more serious offences such as driving off a neighbour's cattle,
1 Pollock and Maitland, op. cit. 1, 346.
2 See below, p. 246.