Law Courts 195
of proof to be accepted was limited and the court was
strict. The Court Customary was thus being weakened
along two lines. Economic changes in the manor were so
modifying society and the relations of lord and
as to remove its raison d'etre; as it became less and less
a source of income to the lord, he would cease to strive
to maintain it. Secondly, the all-absorbing royal courts
were ready to take advantage of every change which
might be construed as adding to the ranks of freemen,
and thus of possible litigants. There were other ways in
which individual villeins became free in the later middle
ages which it is unnecessary to discuss here. Only a
glance at the changes which affected the whole class has
been attempted. The Court Customary did not die
suddenly; it was decadent at the end of the middle ages,
but had some importance well into modern times. How-
ever, the forces which were to bring it to an end have
been seen in full operation in the fourteenth and fifteenth,
centuries. With this court is completed the list of the
older local courts which fell before the royal system. It
remains now to finish the consideration of the attempts
of that system to put into the localities something that
could work in harmony with itself, and that could furnish.
that local administration of justice which, in some form,
is always necessary.1
It is essential to any judicial system that much criminal
business be done quickly and on the spot. Frequent as
judicial iters might become, the king would find it neces-
sary to have resident criminal justices. From what has
been said of the sheriff's tourn, it might seem that that was
destined to meet this need. But hardly had the tourn
come into existence before the king found that he must
have something more and something different. The
sheriff was too great a local, landed personage to be en-
trusted with a power that would have to be extended in
many directions as the peace-keeping and administrative
1 See above, pp. 180-182.