192 The Period of Constitution Making
sheriff would. This implied that, in default of justice
the case had been taken immediately from the court of
first instance to the king's court. But the writ of right
had to do with only one class of cases, albeit a very im-
portant class. In the Provisions of Westminster, how-
ever, is found a statement which covered the matter
broadly and conclusively: "None but the king from
henceforth shall hold pleas in his court of a false judgment
given in the courts of his tenants; because such pleas do
especially belong to the king's crown and dignity."1 "We
may regard this as a turning point in the history of the
feudal courts. If a great baron had been able to make his
court a court not merely for his immediate tenants but also
a court with a supervisory jurisdiction over their courts, it
would have been worth his while to keep his court alive;
it might have become the fountain of justice for a large
district. But a court merely for the suits of his great free-
hold tenants, some dozen or half-dozen knights, was hard-
ly worth having and became less worth having as time
went on."2 There were, of course, many lords, whose
freeholders were not knights having manors and hence
courts of their own; with them this matter of appeal has
no concern. For the reasons enumerated, then, the
Court Baron, the civil jurisdiction which lords, big or
little, had over their freehold tenants ended long before
the close of the middle ages. Something approaching it
was perhaps occasionally used in connection with the
jurisdiction over villeins.5
The villein court, the Court Customary of the manor,
lasted much longer. But forces were at work in the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries that were undermining it.
1 A. and S., p. 66. This was in 1259. The words false judgment are
important, for it was by enforcing the principle here stated that progress
was made towards building up the modern conception of appellate juris-
diction. For an account of the origin of appeal from court to court, see
P. and M. ii, 664-669.
2 Maitland, Introduction to Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p, Hx.
3 It must be remembered that the Court Customary, the villein court,
was for those who held by villein tenure whether personally villeins or
not. On divergence of tenure and status, see above, p, 95.