Anglo-Saxon Institutions. 449-1066 17
a hundred-man or hundred's-ealdor, but after there were
sheriffs this official was replaced by a Serjeant or bailiff
of the sheriff, appointed for each hundred, who convened
and presided. Probably most of the free landholders of
the hundred attended either in person or by deputy, and
this body of freemen did the judging, as far as any real
judgment entered into their procedure. There was noth-
ing in the nature of a professional body of judges or
lawyers in England until long after the Norman Conquest.
The shire court was summoned twice a year by the
sheriff, and he, together with the ealdorman and bishop,
was present at the sessions. The ealdorman, originally
having an official character, was, towards the end of the
tenth century, fast becoming the independent local noble
with control over vast territories, and his attendance at
shire courts must have been increasingly irregular.
Whether he or the sheriff was the presiding or constituting
officer of the court, it is impossible to tell. The bishop
was there to declare the law of the church and look after
the interests of the clergy, for the court dealt with both
ecclesiastical cases and persons. All men of importance
in the shire seem to have attended as a matter of course;
but it is hard to make an accurate statement about the
others who came. It is conjectured that in very early
times this was a thoroughly popular assembly, and, in
those shires which perpetuated the boundaries of early
tribes or petty kingdoms, may have been a lineal descend-
ant of a tribal assembly attended by the armed body of
freemen. But it had become burdensome to attend the
now regularly summoned and peaceful shire court. Trav-
elling even a short distance was a difficult matter in those
days, and the time consumed by, the sessions and the
journey seriously interrupted the rural economy. At the
time we get our first certain knowledge of the make-up of
the court, there was no complete attendance of the free-
men, and, very possibly, the process by which, after the
Norman Conquest, the burden of attending court (suit of
court} became attached to certain holdings of land rather