Law Courts 181
In the same reign, there is evidence of specially full
meetings of the hundred court, held twice a year when
necessary, whose main purpose was view of frankpledge.1
This was an examination of the pledge groups to see if
they were full and properly organised, and the special
meetings of these courts held for such purpose over
which the sheriffs presided must be considered essentially
king's courts; they were to enforce a piece of police ma-
chinery devised by the king. Thus during Henry Us
reign, both shire and hundred courts were, upon occasion,,
king's courts, and were always potentially such.
By the Assize of Clarendon, 1166, a new power was given
the sheriff, the use of the presenting jury; and it has been
suspected that Henry II/s adoption of this procedure in
his own courts, was suggested by the frankpledge system.
"The machinery was apt for the purpose; the duty of
producing one's neighbour to answer accusations could
well be converted into the duty of telling tales against
him.7'2 The sheriff used this jury in the semiannual
meetings of the hundred court, where view of frankpledge
was held, criminal cases were initiated that were to be
concluded before the itinerant justices, and many minor
criminal matters disposed of. This court caine to be
known as the sheriff's tourn.3 It was his semiannual visi-
tation of the hundreds of his shire for the purpose of crimi-
nal jurisdiction. In such a court, where he was as dis-
tinctly a royal justice as the itinerant justice was in his
court, the sheriff naturally assumed more of the judging
function; he was not a mere presiding officer or one who
looked out for the royal interests in a court that derived
its authority from a source outside the long, as he had been
in the old communal courts. This being the character
some related passages in the Leges Henrici Primi in American Historical
Review, viii., pp. 487-490,
1 For the origin of frankpledge, see above, pp. 67-69, 109, no.
2 Maitland, Introduction to vol. ii. of the SeUen Society Publications,
p. xxxvii.
3 The word tourn or turn was not, until after the thirteenth centuiy,
used as a sufficient description of the court; it was Curia msm jranci-
plegii domini regis apud B. cor am mc&comiti in turno suo.