Law Courts 183
were absorbing criminal justice, and the old courts' civil
jurisdiction was being eaten into by the possibility of
evoking cases into the king's court by writ. The enor-
mous popularity of the possessory actions, which could
only be brought in a royal court, made the work of the
shire court seem small; and as these actions often gave
rise to corresponding proprietary actions, they constituted
a positive drain upon the old court.
In Henry IIL's second reissue of Mag^^Carta^2i2;
there was a regulation that the ^hk^CQurt be, held month-
ly, the language implying that it Jfaad been.held_oftener.1
It was becoming distinctly a court for the lesser civil
cases, held at frequent intervals for the accommodation
of the people.2 In it, the old procedure, compurgation,
survived; it did not adopt the jury as did the private
courts. It used jury trial only when the king's court
sent some case into it in order that it might be tried in the
locality. The shire courts clung to the old procedure
because the dwindling number and importance of their
cases hardly made it worth while to attempt anything
new, but the result was undoubtedly a hastened decline.
No one was interested in their survival. They were the
courts of the people, and the people were finding it more
to their advantage to get their cases tried in the king's
courts.
A further weakening resulted from a decreasing attend-
ance. Suit of court had always been regarded as a burden
and attempts had been made to avoid it; now there was no
need of enforcing it so rigidly as in times past. The
Statute of Merton, 1236, made it no longer necessary that
all freeholders who owed suit of court should attend in
person; they might send substitutes. Some of the greater
landowners, who had now little concern with this court,
1 Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 343.
2 "It entertains some of the initial proceedings in criminal cases, but
for the more part it is a civil, non-criminal court; it has an original jur-
isdiction in personal actions; real actions come to it when feudal courts
make default in justice; cases are sent down to it for trial by jury from the
king's court.'*—P. and M., L, 53°-