182 The Period of Constitution Making,
of the tourn, it naturally became a court of record like
the other king's courts. By this is meant that it kept a
record of its proceedings and judgments, which could
thus be used as precedents.1
The invasion of the old local court system by the king's
jurisdiction has become sufficiently marked, as we reach
this point, to make it appear certain that the former will
finally disappear. The relations of the two were very
confused during the next century and a half; and this
makes it necessary here to distinguish and summarise
the later history of the old system, as far as it is possible
to do so, before continuing the discussion of the new
system which the king was putting in its place. The last
epoch in the history of the shire court, the hundred court,
and the private courts will be considered, taking each
separately and in the order named.2
By the end of Henry II. Js reign, the shire court seems to
have met much oftener than twice a year, its custom in
the Anglo-Saxon period. Henry I. had decreed semi-
annual meetings, but had in mind the occasional necessity
of greater frequency. The increase of business, which re-
sulted from a more rigid enforcement of justice and more
use of the local courts by the king, made the exception the
rule by the end of the twelfth century. By that time
also, by the use of commissions, the shire court, when
summoned for certain specified kinds of business, was
changed into a king's court,3 and as such forms no part
of the present subject. By the system of commissions, the
old communal court was shorn of much of its jurisdic-
tion. The itinerant justice and the sheriff in his torn
1 The old local courts, both public and private, began to imitate the
king's courts and keep records about the middle of the thirteenth cen-
tury, a half century after the kings' courts began the practice. These
records, of course, had no public authority.
^a No clear and detailed account of the steps by which this older juris-
diction waned is possible. The further it is traced, the more scanty and
obscure does the information become, a proof in itself of the steadiness
with which it declined.
3 See above, pp. 142,180.