ENGLISH LOCAL GOVEKNMENT
FROM
THE REVOLUTION
TO
THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERN-
MENT FROM THE REVOLU-
TION TO THE MUNICIPAL
CORPORATIONS ACT: THE
MANOR AND THE BOROUGH.
BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE
WEBB. PART ONE.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 39
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
NEW YORK, CALCUTTA AND BOMBAY.
1908.
CONTENTS
BOOK III
THE MANOE AND THE BOROUGH
PAOE
INTRODUCTION. ......... 3
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE LORD'S COURT 9
(a) THE LAWYER'S VIEW OF THE LORD'S COURT . . 11
(6) THE COURT BARON 13
(c) THE COURT LEET ....... 21
CHAPTER II
THE COURT IN RUINS . . . . . . . . 31
(a) THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS . . . . 32
(6) THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED ..... 50
(c) THE COURT OF THE MANOR 64
(i.) THE BAMBURGH COURTS 89
v
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
PAGE
(ii.) THE COURT LEET OF THE SAVOY ... 96
(ill) THE COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MAN-
CHESTER. ....... 99
(d) THE PREVALENCE AND DECAY OK THE LORD'S COURT 114
CHAPTER III
THE MANORIAL BOROUGH 127
(a) THE VILLAGE MEETING 128
(6) THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP . 134
(c) THE LORDLESS COURT 148
(d) THE LORD'S BOROUGH . . . . . . . 160
(e) THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH . . . 178
(/) MANOR AND GILD . . . . . . .186
(</) ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY . . . . 200
CHAPTER IV
THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER . .212
(a) BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION . . . . .213
(6) MUNICIPAL ATROPHY 223
CHAPTER V
THE BOROUGHS OF WALES 232
(a) INCIPIENT AUTONOMY 235
(6) THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH . . . .241
(c) THE WELSH MUNICIPAL CORPORATION . . . 254
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER VI
f PAGE
THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION . . . . .261.
(a) THE INSTRUMENT OF INCORPORATION .... 267
(b) CORPORATE JURISDICTIONS . . . . . 275
(c) CORPORATE OBLIGATIONS . . . . . .285
(d) THE AREA OP THE CORPORATION . . . 288
(e) THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION . . . 292
(/) THE SERVANTS OF THE CORPORATION . . . 302
(#) THE CHIEF OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION . . 306
(h) THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION .... 309
(i) THE BAILIFFS 318
(j) THE HIGH STEWARD AND THE RECORDER . . . 321
(k) THE CHAMBERLAIN AND THE TOWN CLERK . . 324
(I) THE COUNTY OFFICERS OF THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 328
(m) THE MAYOR'S BRETHREN AND THE MAYOR'S COUNSELLORS 333
(n) THE COURTS OF THE CORPORATION . . .337
(o) COURTS OF CIVIL JURISDICTION 339
(p) THE COURT LEET 344
(g) THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS . . 349
(?) COURTS OF SPECIALISED JURISDICTION . . . .358
(fi) THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURTS OF THE MUNICIPAL
CORPORATION 360
(t) THE MUNICIPAL CONSTITUTIONS OF 1689 . . 367
viii ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
MUNICIPAL DISINTEGRATION 384
(a) THE RISE OF THE CORPORATE MAGISTRACY . . 384
(6) THE DECLINE or THE COMMON COUNCIL . . .390
(c) THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW STATUTORY AUTHORITIES 394
(d) THE PASSING OP THE FREEMEN . . . . .396
(e) THE MINGLING OP DECAY AND GROWTH . . . 402
BOOK III
THE MANOE AND THE BOEOUGH
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I. THE LORD'S COURT.
II. THE COURT IN RUINS.
III. THE MANORIAL BOROUGH.
IV. THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER.
V. THE BOROUGHS OF WALES.
VI. THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION.
VII. MUNICIPAL DISINTEGRATION.
,, VIII. ADMINISTRATION BY CLOSE CORPORATIONS.
,, IX. ADMINISTRATION BY MUNICIPAL DEMOCRACIES.
X. THE CITY OF LONDON.
XL THE MUNICIPAL REVOLUTION.
VOL. II. FT. I
INTRODUCTION
IN a preceding volume l we have dealt with two main forms
of English Local Government, the Parish and the County ;
organisations which existed from one end of the kingdom to
the other. But to the rule of the County to some slight
extent also to the rule of the Parish there were, up and
down England, numerous exceptions, out of which had
developed, as it happens, not the least important, and, as some
may think, the most picturesque parts of the Local Government
of England between the Ee volution and the Municipal Cor-
porations Act, namely, those connected with the Manor and
the Borough. It does not lie within our province to inquire
whether some or all of these exceptions to the uniform
organisation of Parish and County may not represent a once
universal government, either Manorial or of Village Community
character. Whether or not this was the case, the continued
existence of these forms after 1689 compels us to devote a
volume to the various Exemptions, Immunities, and Franchises
which enabled the inhabitants of particular localities to exclude
the authority of the County at large, or that of one or other of
its officers; and thereby to enjoy, within their own favoured
areas, some peculiar forms of self-government. 2
1 English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations
Act, vol. i. The Parish and the County, 1906.
2 It may occur to the student that there was, between 1689 and 1835,
another kind of definitely localised local governing body, not based on
immunities or exemptions, but wielding, within its area, new and specialised
powers. Such authorities were, for instance, the Turnpike Trustees or the
various types of Street Commissioners, established by Local Acts. With all
these authorities we deal in another work. It must suffice here to note that,
although affecting limited areas, they did not constitute exceptions to the rule
of the County. They might, in fact, without inconsistency with the County
or with each other, have been multiplied so as to cover the whole area.
3
4 THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH
The proportion of the Local Government of England that
was, in 1689, carried on, whether by prescription, by Charter,
or by statute, in the form of exemptions from or exclusions of
County jurisdiction, was far larger than is commonly supposed.
Thus, with a few insignificant exceptions, the whole force
of police that then existed owed its appointment neither
to the Parish nor the County, but to Manorial Courts or
Municipal Corporations ; whilst the magistracy of the large
towns was provided, not by the Commission of the Peace, but
by the Mayors, Aldermen, and Eecorders. The suppression of
nuisances, which comprised at that time nearly the whole
regulative activity of local authorities, was practically
monopolised by the Leets of private Lords and of enfranchised
Boroughs ; for the recovery of small debts, the Court Baron of
the Lord, or its municipal analogue, often called the Court of
Record or the Court of Pleas, had largely ousted the Court of
the Sheriff of the County at large. Markets and fairs were
matters neither of Parish nor of County concern, but were
under the control of the individual or Corporate owners of
Franchises; whilst many lay and clerical Lords, and most
Municipal Corporations, had their own gaols, if no longer their
own privileges of "pit and gallows." More important than
these common services, which, in 1689, were still small in
extent, was the administration of the land, a service not now
usually connected with Local Government. But even at the
end of the seventeenth century, no small fraction of the surface
of the Kingdom was still managed by or in connection with
those local governing authorities that we class as Seignorial
Franchises and Municipal Corporations. In thousands of
rural Manors the rotation of crops, the dates at which the
various agricultural operations should be undertaken, the
management of the pastures, quarries, and fisheries, the care
of the cattle, and the breeding of stock formed part of the
business of the same open " Court " that suppressed nuisances,
fined minor offenders, chose the local officers, and tried petty
actions for debt and damages. In hundreds of urban districts
the Manorial Courts or the Municipal Corporations were
administering not only the remnant of the ancient commons,
but also dwelling-houses, wharves, docks, quays, piers, shambles,
and market places. The tolls and dues levied by these
INTRODUCTION 5
authorities, whether by Charter, prescription, or mere ownership
of the soil, formed in the aggregate no unworthy rivals of the
various County and Parish Rates. By 1835, it is true, the
agricultural business of these local governing bodies had, with
the progress of inclosure, shrunk into insignificance. The
importance of the urban properties and the revenue from tolls
had, on the other hand, in many places greatly increased.
In our history of the County we showed that, in 1689,
practically its whole business, from one end of England to
the other, was transacted by judicial process, in open Courts
of Justice, in the guise of enforcing fixed personal obligations.
By 1835, as we have seen, this had been silently transformed
into administration by committees, meeting in private, appoint-
ing, instructing, and controlling a salaried staff of officers
according to a variable policy decided on from time to time
by the committees themselves. The Seignorial Franchises
and Municipal Corporations seem, at first sight, to admit of
no such simple generalisation. We shall, indeed, describe the
successive stages of what appears to us to be an analogous
evolution. But instead of being able to trace this evolution,
within the very period with which we are dealing, in the life-
history of one vigorous organism, what we have is rather
a collection of apparently heterogeneous individuals, showing
signs of having been arrested in their development at different
stages of their growth ; some remaining in a rudimentary state ;
some even reverting to simpler types; and some, again, stand-
ing still at what seems full maturity. Those local governing
authorities that we describe in our chapters on " The Lord's
Court " and " The Court in Euins " never developed, from first
to last, anything beyond the machinery of a judicial tribunal,
designed to enforce pre-existing rights and obligations. In
subsequent chapters we shall describe, under the terms the
" Lordless Court," the " Lord's Borough," and the " Enfranchised
Manorial Borough," organisations marked by the possession of
specialised administrative structure of various grades of com-
plexity, from the mere creation of one or two new officers
and the custody of a common purse up to a full equipment
of Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councillors, but exhibiting
during the whole century and a half little or no development,
aud in some cases even retrograding to the simpler form of
6 THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH
a Lord's Court. The more highly organised bodies that we
analyse in our various chapters on Municipal Corporations
usually, we may observe, exhibiting no great tendency to
develop have in their constitutions the administrative
structure predominant, whilst the judicial tribunals and
judicial processes have sunk to a subordinate, and sometimes
to an insignificant position. It adds to the complexity, and,
as we think, to the impression produced of arrested development,
that, so far as the period between 1689 and 1835 is concerned,
we find all the different types coexisting in each successive
decade. In 1835 there were still rural Manors in which
the archaic Lord's Court provided the local services by the
enforcement of ancient personal obligations. Already, in
1689, the Corporation of the City of London was transacting
its extensive business by an administrative apparatus more
highly developed than that of the most advanced County a
hundred and fifty years later apparatus more complicated
than any modern constitution can show.
Yet in face of this apparent heterogeneity, and of what we
may call the sluggishness of development among our various
individuals, the very multitude of the specimens, and their
variety in detail, enables us to set them out in such an order
that they are seen, alike in constitution and in function, to
pass almost imperceptibly one into another. Nor is it only
between the separate organisms themselves that there are no
sharp dividing lines. In particular instances we may see the
Court Leet and View of Frankpledge becoming inextricably
confused with the General Sessions of the Peace ; the Court
Baron or Customary Court with the Borough Court of Eecord
or Court of Pleas ; and the Jury of either or both of these
Manorial Courts with the Court of Common Council. The
student, we suggest, will find it impracticable to regard the
various individuals otherwise than as members of one and the
same genus ; nor, we must add, otherwise than as units in an
ascending series. There is, in fact, no logical stopping point,
when all the specimens are reviewed, between the most
insignificant Court of a petty Lord of the Manor, held once
or twice a year at his Hall, for the admission of a new tenant
or the appoiutment of the Constable, and the many-chartered
Corporation of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the
INTRODUCTION ^
City of London ; an all-embracing government in perpetual
session ; a County of itself, controlling the services of the most
important mercantile port in the world ; administering a
revenue of regal magnificence ; and exercising judicial and
even legislative functions, asserted to be independent of the
High Court of Parliament itself.
We do not wish to assert that this ascending series
of surviving specimens necessarily represents the successive
stages in the life-history of the most fully-developed Chartered
Municipality. Such a hypothesis we leave to be tested by
the historians of the Manor and the Borough. It is, indeed,
plain, even on a survey of what existed between 1689 and
1835, that part of the Municipal structure and some Municipal
functions are not to be found, even in germ, in any Manorial
origin. The historian must take account of those ancient
shire towns distinguished by heterogeneity of tenure. 1 Also
the remnant of Gild organisation clinging to many eighteenth
century Municipalities possibly even the frequent admission
to the Freedom of the Corporation by Servitude of Apprentice-
ship points to an ancestry unconnected with the Manor.
We must, moreover, not forget the working of the imitative
faculty, and of the tendency to assimilation. A constitution
which had, by custom and by law, developed out of one form
of association may be subsequently adopted by, or imposed
upon, other groups of persons associated together for quite
other reasons. But whether or not our classification suggests
any plausible theory of the growth of the Manor and the
development of the Borough, some such classification of the
ascending series of franchises and immunities, exemptions and
privileges, customs and powers, that existed between 1689
and 1835 outside the County and over and above the Parish,
is indispensable to any adequate survey of English Local
Government.
A thoroughly intelligent description of these Seignorial
Franchises and Municipal Corporations, even as they existed
in 1689, would require an historical erudition that we do not
possess. Already in the seventeenth century these mediseval
institutions had fallen more or less into decay, leaving, in the
1 Township and Borough, by Trof. F. W. Maitland, 1898 ; The Domesday
Boroughs, by A. Ballard, 1906.
8 THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH
majority of cases, only disconnected fragments of what we may
assume to have once been a complicated if not a systematic
structure. Without an adequate knowledge of what exactly
was the Manor in its prime, and of the part played by the
Borough in the local government of the twelfth century, it is
difficult, and sometimes impossible, to trace and to understand
the significance of such remnants as remained at the end of
the seventeenth century. Our lack of knowledge of what the
organism in its maturity was and did necessarily hampers our
interpretation of its remains. A further difficulty is caused
by the fact that these remnants, in many cases, did not remain
unaltered. In the Municipal Corporation in particular, the
new growths of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are
often found inextricably twined about the old structure the
gain by accretion coming, in some specimens, to be more than
equivalent to the loss by decay. In the case of some of the
larger and more populous Chartered Municipalities, such as
Norwich and Bristol, Nottingham and Southampton, the
development of a Corporate Magistracy so completely sub-
merged the more ancient structure, whether Gild or Manorial,
that we might almost have described them as particular
varieties of a specialised form of the County ; whilst in the
exceptional instance of the City of London, one or more of its
outgrowths its so-called Commission of Sewers, if not also its
Corporation of the Poor might, in addition, have conveniently
been classed with the Statutory Bodies for Special Purposes
that we shall describe in the succeeding volume.
CHAPTEE I
THE LORD'S COURT
IN many parishes of England, town as well as country, we
find existing, in the latter part of the seventeenth century,
a sort of local governing authority that was neither Parish
Vestry nor County Justices, neither Statutory Body nor
Municipal Corporation, but one or other tattered remnant of
the old jurisdiction of the Manor. Here and there would
be found public officers exercising peculiar functions under
strange titles. An Aleconner or a Pinder, a Swine-ringer or a
Burleyman, a Common Driver or a Constable sometimes
even a vaguely influential potentate called a Portreeve or a
Boroughreeve derived his authority neither from the meet-
ing of the inhabitants in Vestry assembled, nor from the
Justices of the Peace ; neither from Statute nor from Charter.
Once or twice a year a " Court " would be held, to which
people would resort, for purposes they scarcely knew what.
At this " Court Leet," or " Halmot Court," or " Soke Court,"
or " Court Baron," or " Forest Court," or " Hundred Court," or
"Swainmoot," or "Lawday," as it was variously styled in
different instances, all sorts of matters of common interest,
as well as questions connected with individual property rights,
might be dealt with. In one place all transfers of copyhold
property, on death or on alienation, would be registered with
quaint ceremonies, accompanied by the exaction of customary
fines and fees. In another, various arrangements about the
commonfield agriculture, the " town bull and boar," the use of
the " town's plough," or the management of the common
pasture would form the bulk of the business. In others,
flgain, the presentment of nuisances and the condemnation
io THE LORD'S COURT
of offenders to a fine would seem to fill the greatest place.
It was in such a Court, as Butler tells us in Hudibras, that
the villagers would
. . . impeach a broken hedge,
And pigs un ringed ; at Vis. Franc. Pledge,
Discover thieves, bawds, and recusants,
Tell who did play at games unlawful,
And who filled pots of ale but half-full. 1
What was invariable in such a Court was the appointment of
one or more officers ; and the plain citizen, to whom the
Manor had seemed but a harmless antiquity, might discover
that he had been summarily chosen to discharge some onerous
public function without fee or reward, or that he had been
condemned to pay a small fine for this or that offence against
the well-being of the little community. 2
1 Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, Canto II. It will be remembered that
Shakespeare makes Christopher Sly, in his "very idle words "-
Rail upon the hostess of the house
And say you would present Jier at Uie Leet
Because she brought stone jugs and no seal'd quarts.
(Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Scene ii.).
2 We know of no adequate study of the Lord's Court, as an organ of Local
Government, from the beginning to the end of its development. By far the
most authoritative, as well as the most interesting, account of its actual form
and working is to be gathered from the various writings of Professor F. W.
Maitland ; notably his Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seignorial Courts,
1889, and The, Court Baron, 1891, both volumes of the Selden Society ; and
Tlie History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, 1895,
vol. i. For the latest discussion of the conflicting views see Surveys Historic
and Economic, by Prof. W. J. Ashley, 1900, and T)i Growth of the Manor, by
Professor Vinogradoff, 1905. Useful bibliographies will be found in Miss F. G.
Davenport's Classified List of Original Materials for English Manorial and
Agrarian History, 1894 ; and The Manor and Manorial Records, by N. J.
Hone, 1906. Bacon gives a clear account of the functions of the Court Leet in
his Answers to Questions proposed by Sir Alexander Hay touching the Office of
Constable, 1608, and in vol. vii. pp. 748-754 of the 1858 edition of his Works ;
and its relation to other judicial institutions is well stated in The History of
English Law, by Professor W. S. Holdsworth, 1903. Among the numerous
legal treatises and manuals for Stewards not to speak of half-a-dozen archaic
works of the sixteenth century we may mention The Order of Keeping a Court
Leet and Court Baron, by Jonas Adames, 1593 ; Jurisdictions, or the Lawful
Authority of Courts Leet, etc., by John Kitchin, 1598 (and about fourteen other
editions in English or French down to 1675) ; The Complete Copyholder, by Sir
Edward Coke, 1630 (and half-a-dozen other editions down to 1764); The
Relation between a Lord of the Manor and the Copyholder his Tenant, by Charles
Calthorpe, 1635 ; The Court- Keeper's Guide, etc., by William Sheppard, 1641
THE LAWYERS VIEW OF THE LORD'S COURT n
(a) The Lawyer's view of the Lord's Court
The common bewilderment as to the meaning of the
Lord's Court was not shared by the authors of the elaborate
manuals of its jurisdiction and procedure, prepared for the
instruction of Stewards and others who had the duty of
" keeping Courts." In these popular manuals we find dis-
played a clear-cut theory of the origin, exact constitution, and
precise functions of the Courts of Lords of Manors, asserted
with an assurance that may usefully be contrasted with the
modesty of conjecture of such modern investigators as
Professors Maitland and Vinogradoff. We may, in the
twentieth century, doubt whether " the methodically learned
John Kitchin of 1 Gray's Inn, Esquire, and Double Reader"
(and about eight other editions down to 1791) ; Treatise of the Antiquity,
Authority, Uses, and Jurisdiction of the Ancient Courts of Leet, by Robert Powell,
1642, 1688 ; The Authority . . . of . . . County Courts, Courts Leet, and Courts
Baron, by William Greenwood, 1st edition, 1668, 9th edition, 1730 ; Lex
Custumaria, by S. C[arter], 1701 (other editions to 1796) ; Practice of Courts Leet
and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 1st edition, 1714, 4th edition, 1728 ;
The Complete Court-Keeper, by Giles Jacob, 1st edition, 1713, 8th edition, 1819 ;
Lex Maneriorum, by W. Nelson, 1728; History of the High Court of Parliament
. . . and . . . of Court Baron and Court Leet, by T. Gurdon, 1731 ; The Complete
Steward, by John Mordant, 1761 ; Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph
Ritson, 1791 ; Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, etc., by R. B. Fisher,
1794, 1804; Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 1st edition, 1797,
4th edition, 1825 ; Laws respecting Copyhold and Court -Keeping, etc., by
Henry Fellowes, 1799 ; Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven,
first edition, 1816, seventh edition, 1896 ; C'opyJiold and Court-keeping Practice,
by Rolla Rouse, 1837 ; The Law of Copyholds, by Leonard Shelford, 1853 ;
and especially The Law of Copyholds, by C. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay,
2nd edition, 1893. The last-named work (with those of Watkins and Scriven)
we have found the most useful. An admirable account of a mediaeval Manor
will be found in The Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, 1086-1565,
by Miss F. G. Davenport, 1906. For references to MS. Manor Rolls, see
p. 116. The most complete series of published records of a Court Leet, extend-
ing from 1552 to 1846, is The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester,
edited by J. P. Earwaker, twelve vols., 1884-1890. The Durham Halmote Rolls
(Surtees Society) and Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, by Rev. W.
Hudson, 1892 (Selden Society), may be consulted for earlier proceedings.
The best descriptions known to us of the actual proceedings of Courts Leet in
the nineteenth century are those of the Court at Ashton-under-Lyne in 1844
(Health of Towns Commission, First Report, Appendix, vol. ii. pp. 71-73) ;
of the Court at Berkeley in 1890, in Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, vol. iv.
1890, p. 27 ; and of the Court at Durham in 1805, in Memorials of S. Giles',
Durham, edited by J. Barmby, 1896, p. 7. See also History of the English
Landed Interest, by R. M. Gamier, 1892, ch. xxix. and xxx. We know
of no work describing the part played by the Lord's Court between 16S9
and 1835.
12 THE LORD'S COURT
knew quite as much about the origin and early development
of the Court Leet and Court Baron as he supposed. Even
what he described as its contemporary nomenclature and
procedure was, as we shall presently show, unlike the actual
facts of many of the Courts that were being held around him.
But such treatises as Kitchin's Jurisdictions and Jacob's
Complete Court -Keeper had a significance not possessed by
any similar handbooks for parish officers or Justices. The
Overseers of the Poor and the Surveyors of Highways, like
the Clerk of the Peace, could turn to numerous statutes
authoritatively defining their powers and duties. But the
Lord's Court was not the creation of any Act of Parliament.
There was not even a Royal Charter prescribing its constitu-
tion or procedure. In default of any authoritative document,
the Steward whom the Lord appointed to hold his Court
naturally accepted the guidance of the contemporary legal
manuals. Hence the perpetual republishing and elaborating
of these manuals by a succession of legal experts can hardly
have failed to have tended gradually to transform the Courts
as they were into the Courts as the lawyers thought they
ought to be. Moreover, the legal theory of the seventeenth
century has, for us, a further value. It preserves some of
the spirit which had inspired the Manorial Courts in their
prime, without some understanding of which their function
can hardly be appreciated. Before describing the fragments of
Manorial Jurisdiction actually forming part of English Local
Government between 1689 and 1835, we think it, therefore,
convenient to give in outline the constitution, procedure, and
functions attributed to the Lord's Court by the contemporary
legal authors.
We note, first, that, in the lawyer's view, we have before
us not one Lord's Court, but several ; with different constitu-
tions and functions, different procedures and officers. There
is evident a tendency to elaboration, one learned authority
making out as many as five different Courts. 1 But this
1 In R. B. Fisher's Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, 1794, these are
given as the Court Leet, the View of Frankpledge, the Court Baron, the
Customary Court, and the Court of Survey. But there is no evidence that
there was ever a separate Court called the View of Frankpledge, this being
merely a duty undertaken by the Sheriff's Turn and afterwards by the Lord's
Court (as Court Leet). The Court of Survey (occasionally called also ' ' Court
THE COURT BARON 13
elaboration and distinction was largely, if not entirely, analytic.
The models for procedure offered to Stewards constantly
assumed that the various kinds of Court would be held at
one and the same time, as connected parts of what was in
fact a single sessions of one and the same tribunal. We are
unable to find contrary to a common impression that even
the most punctilious lawyer asserted that the several Courts
which he analytically distinguished ought, as a matter of law,
always to be held at different times or at different places. So
far as analytic distinction was concerned, the Courts resolved
themselves, in the lawyer's view, into two sharply contrasted
tribunals, the Court Baron and Customary Court on the one
hand, and the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge on the
other. 1
(b) The Court Baron
The Great Court of the Manor, or Court Baron, was, in the
lawyers' view, essentially a private Court of the Lord, necessarily
incident to every Manor, having for its object the maintenance
of the rights of the Lord against his tenants and of the privileges
of the tenants against the Lord, together with the settlement
of their mutual differences and the organisation of their common
affairs. It was not a Court of Eecord, but a private jurisdic-
tion forming part of the estate and property of the Lord.
The Court was to be summoned by notice given by the Steward
to the Eeeve or Bailiff, and by him affixed to the Church door,
or handed to the Parish Clerk to be read in Church, according
of the Supervisor " see Seven Somerton Court Rolls, by A. Ballard ; Transactions
of Oxfordshire Archaeological Society, 1906) was only a special sitting of the
Court Baron, at which every tenant of the Manor had to produce his title,
and special inquiry was made of the mutual rights and privileges of Lord
and tenants. It was "generally held immediately upon the descending
of a Manor to a new Lord, or upon the purchase of a Manor, to inform
the new owner of every respective estate which he has a right to as Lord, and
the tenure and customs by which they are held " (The Laws receding Copy-
holds and Court-keeping, by Henry Fellowes, 1799, p. 43). Elaborate details
of what a Court of Survey should inquire into are given in The Surveyor's
Dialogue, by John Norden, originally published in 1607, and in a fourth
edition in 1738 (see pp. 120-213).
1 That the legal manuals from the thirteenth century onward distinctly
contemplated the holding, in one undivided sessions, of all the two, three, four,
or even five Courts that they analytically distinguished, will be clear to
any one who examines the model agenda for the sessions that most of them
supply. In this agenda the items belonging to the several Courts are inter-
14 THE LORD'S COURT
to local usage. 1 It was to be presided over by the Lord or
his Steward, and had to be attended by all the tenants of the
Manor, whether freeholders or copyholders. Neglect to attend
the Court subtraction, or non-performance of suit of Court
was punishable in the absence of an "essoin," or excuse
admitted as sufficient, by a fine, and theoretically even by
mingled ; and one Jury after another is to be sworn and charged. As in the
Court rolls, so in " the manuals for Stewards which come to us from the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we cannot discover two Courts or two
methods of constituting the Court " (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock
and F. W. Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 581). The later manuals are to the
same effect. "After the Steward has gone through his charge to the jurors
of the Court Leet," says Sir William Scroggs, "he may proceed to his charge
to the Homagers or Court Baron " (The Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron,
by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition, 1728, p. 22). Even Sir Edward Coke
alludes to Courts "of this double nature." The common practice "where
a Court Leet and Court Baron are held together" is referred to (ibid. p. 11 ;
Lex Custumaria, by S. C[arter], 1701, p. 73) ; or "where the three Courts are
held at the same time " (Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by R. B. Fisher,
1794, p. 167). The five necessary attributes of the Lord's Court, according to
a widely read authority, were "The Lord is chief to command and appoint,
the Steward to direct and record, the freeholders to affeer and judge, the
copyholders to inform and present, the Bailiff to attend and execute" thus
merging the Customary Court with the Court Baron (The Authority, Jurisdic-
tion, and Method of Keeping County Courts, Courts Leet, and Courts Baron, by
W. Greenwood, 9th edition, 1730, pp. 309-405). So, too, in the hundred
pages of ',' customs " of particular Manors given by Watkins, the items belonging
to the Court Baron, Customary Court, and Court Leet are not distinguished
one from another (A Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 4th edition,
1825, vol. ii. pp. 477-576). "The various Courts," says an able antiquary,
' ' were conducted very much on the same lines in all Manors ; that is, all
business connected with the transfer of land was duly settled, presentments
were made of the tenants for various offences, as trespass, assault, blood-
drawing, drunkenness, pound - breaking, disorderly conduct, etc., and for
disobeying sanitary regulations in not cleansing ditches. Actions between
tenants were tried, an immense boon to them, for they had a Court of Justice
in their own locality, acquainted with the parties to the suit and the witnesses "
(The History of Dulwich College, by W. Young, 1889 ; vol. ii. ch. ii., on the
Court Rolls, by F. B. Bickley, p. 266). In fact, any careful student of the
lawyers' treatises, as of the Court Rolls, will, notwithstanding all the analytic
differentiation, have no difficulty in inferring of the Courts which they are
describing that as Professor Maitland tells us of those of the thirteenth
century "the Court which had been enforcing the customs of the Manor did
not become some other Court when it turned to punish breaches of the peace
or to adjudicate upon actions of debt between the tenants ; a lawyer might
analyse its powers, might insist that some were royal franchises, while others
were not, but all its powers, whatever they might be, were used in the mass
and apparently with little thought as to the various titles by which they had
been acquired" (Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seignorial Courts, by
Prof. F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. xviii ; see also History of English Law, by Prof.
W. S. Holdsworth, 1903, pp. 68-69).
1 Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven, 1816, pp. 433-449.
It was said that at least sixteen days' notice ought to be given (The Order of
Keeping a Court Leet and Court Baron, by Jonas Adames, 1593, p. 1).
THE COURT BARON 15
forfeiture of the tenement. The " free suitors," or freehold
tenants of the Manor, holding of the Lord, in fee simple, land
liable to escheat to him, were assumed to constitute the Homage ;
and the presence of at least two such freeholders, if not three, 1
was declared to be indispensable to a legal Court Baron. But
as subinfeudation had been forbidden since the Statute of Quia
Emptores in 1290 there were, by 1689, few Manors in which
this condition could be complied with ; and the lawyers had
been driven to assert that a " Customary Court Baron " could
be held in the presence of copyholders only, who themselves
constituted the Homage. 2 And by special custom, there might
be separate Homages or Juries, sometimes of freeholders and
copyholders respectively, having distinct functions. " If," said
a writer of 1656, " the custom of the place be to make two or
more Juries, or one Grand Jury and divers Petit Juries, it is
good to observe it." 3
The Court was to be opened by formal proclamation and
summons to all concerned to attend. The roll of those owing
" suit of Court " had to be read, and the names noted of those
who were present. The " essoins " of the absentees were to be
received and considered, and the defaulters to be fined. The
Homage or Jury was then to be sworn, four at a time ; and
the Steward had to address to them a formal " charge." The
judgments of the Court were made either by the whole
" Homage," or by a Jury of Homagers,* and they were embodied
in the form of presentments to the Court, which were accepted
and pronounced by the Steward.
The principal business of the Court was to declare and en-
force the ancient customs of the Manor, which, whether relating
1 In the Manor of Dymock (Gloucestershire) the legal quorum was, by custom,
three ; see the "customs" as elaborately recorded in an indenture of 1565, en-
rolled in Chancery in 1657 ; mentioned in Jurisdictions, by John Kitchin, in
1598 ; and given in A Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
vol. ii. pp. 487-491.
2 The Bf lotion between the Lord of the Manor and the Copyholder his Tenant,
by Charles Calthorpe, 1635, p. 72.
3 Tlie Court- Keeper's Guide, by William Sheppard, 1656, p. 20. " In some
cases," said the lawyers, " the Steward may impanel a second Jury to inquire
into the concealments of the first, and fine them " {The Practice of Courts Leet
and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition, 1728, p. 16).
4 "Out of the copyholders choose your Homage," says a manual (Laics
respecting Copyholds and Court-keeping, by Henry Fellowes, 1799, pp. 32-
43).
1 6 THE LORD'S COURT
to the incidents of land tenure, or to the use of the common
fields or waste, were legally binding on both the Lord and his
tenants. At one Court annually, the Manorial officers were to
be appointed tihe Keeve or Greave, or Bailiff, who collected
the Lord's quit-rents and heriots, his " fines certain " and " fines
arbitrary," his " work silver " and his " customary penny," his
" chevage " and " childwite," his " boscage " and " foldage " ; the
Beadle, who gathered in the fines and amercements ; the
Hayward, who had in charge the common or waste ; l some-
times a Common Driver or a Herdsman, a Hog-ringer or a
Swineherd, a Woodward or a " Greave of the Moors," a " Sur-
veyor of Hedges " to see that the tenants enclosed during
seed-time and harvest, 2 or other officers connected with the
customary privileges of the community. These officers were in
the vast majority of cases "presented by the Homage"
sometimes several persons for the Steward to choose one.
The question of liability to service in the several offices,
and of the remuneration, if any, for such service, was deter-
mined by the ancient customs of the Manor in each case.
Moreover, the Court was said to have a vaguely defined
power to enact By-laws, binding on all the tenants of the
Manor, at least in matters, such as the use of the waste, in
which they had a common interest. It was the business of the
Homage or Jury also to make presentments of escheats and
surrenders of tenements, and of the death of any tenant of the
Lord ; of dower and freebench, of " waste," " emblements," and
" botes." New tenants had also to be admitted by the Steward,
on payment of the customary fees and fines, and with due per-
1 It does not seem possible to accept Mrs. Grote's simple etymology which
made Hayward = hogwarden (Some Account of the Hamlet of East Burnham,
by a Resident, i.e. Harriet Grote, London, 1858, p. 28) ; nor is the later identifi-
cation of Hayward with hedgewarden more trustworthy. The duties of the
mediaeval Hayward, harvestman or reaper (in Latin, mtssor or messarius), a mere
farm servant, "who seems to have acted sometimes as pounder," are fully described
by Walter de Henley ; see also pp. xxv and xxxiii of The Durham Halmot Rolls
(Surtces Society, 1889), and at p. 140 of The Court Baron (edited by F. W.
Maitland and W. P. Baildon for the Selden Society, 1891). The word is used
for shepherd in the "Journal of a Gloucestershire Justice, 1715-1756," in Law
Magazine and Review, vol. ix. p. 280. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the Hayward might act in almost any capacity as an officer of the
Lord's Court. Kitchin gives the title as synonymous with Greave or Beadle
(Jurisdictions, etc., by John Kitchin, p. 93 of edition of 1675).
2 As at Gnossall (Staffordshire) ; see The Manor and Manorial Records, by
N. J. Hone, 1906, p. 193.
THE COURT BARON 17
formance of the ancient ceremonies of the Manor. 1 The Court,
moreover, had the important function of hearing plaints and
deciding disputes. It had, said Kitchin, been "ordained to
determine injuries, trespasses, debts, and other actions," 2 at any
rate among the tenants of the Manor, and by immemorial
custom, also actions against mere residents within the Manor ;
but in all cases limited, by the judges' construction of an
ambiguous statute, to actions for less than forty shillings. 3 It
might or might not examine witnesses, as the freeholders, who
were both the judges and the jurymen, chose to decide. 4 The
Court could be held anywhere within the Manor, or, by custom,
1 See the extensive collection of the customs of particular Manors recorded in
A Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, pp. 477-576.
2 Jurisdictions, etc., by John Kitchin, 1598, p. 6. "A Court Baron, "says
another authority, " consisteth of the Lord, Tenants, Steward, and Bailiff within
the Manor, and is sometimes called the Copyholders' Court, especially when it is
for trial of titles of their lands, for taking and passing estates, surrenders, admit-
tances, and grants ; and herein the Lord or his Steward is judge (as the custom of
the place is) ; yet this Court is sometimes called the Freeholders' Court, when
the actions and proceedings are for trial under 40s., and is something like a
County Court, and the proceeding much the same, and was without doubt
granted to the Lord originally by the King ; but now most are by prescription,
and are commonly held once in three weeks, and may be as often as the Lord or
Steward thinks fit, who is supreme judge in law and equity" (The Practice of
Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition, 1728, pp.
39-40).
3 The Statute of Gloucester, 1278, limiting actions in the King's Courts to cases
in which not less than 40s. was at issue, was construed by the judges as for-
bidding such actions in the County Court and Court Baron (Select Pleas in
Manorial Courts, by F. W. Maitland, p. Ivi). At Dover, by custom, the Lord's
Court had jurisdiction without limit of 40s. (Jurisdictions, by John Kitchiu,
1598) ; and in at least several scores of Manors possibly those once connected
with such ecclesiastical corporations as the Knights of St. John the Court had
jurisdiction in probate and testamentary cases (Treatise on the Law of Copyholds,
by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 423). The wills proved in nearly
fifty such Courts, between 1562 and 1815, are now deposited at Somerset House,
London, or at various diocesan registries (see the list in The Manor and Manorial
Records, by N. J. Hone, 1906, pp. 22, 302).
4 The Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th
edition, 1728, p. 3. Whether the Court had anciently heard counsel or allowed
appearance by attorney is not clear. That it did so in places in the eighteenth
century is plain, but we suspect that this was exceptional. We read in 1731 of
"the Freeholders' Court having lost most of its business, lawyers and attorneys not
finding an account in giving attendance there for one or two cases, and the parties
finding it difficult to have the assistance of lawyers there" (The History of the
High Court of Parliament . . . and . . . of Court Baron and Court Leet, by
T. Gurdon, 1731, vol. ii. p. 610). Occasionally even leading counsel would
appear. At a " Baronial Court " held in the archiepiscopal Manor of Lambeth in
1828, with a Jury of copyholders, both the Attorney - General and Henry
Brougham were engaged for the several parties in a copyhold case (Augell v.
Angell ; see Times, January 7, 1828).
VOL. II. PT. I C
1 8 THE LORDS COURT
in one Manor for other Manors belonging to the same Lord.
It could be called together whenever the Lord or his Steward
chose, without unreasonably inconveniencing the tenants ; but
usually, by custom, it was to be held every three weeks a
period apparently derived from a Writ of Henry III. to the
Sheriff of Lincoln, authorising the Courts of the Lords to be
so held, 1 whence they were frequently termed Three Weeks'
Courts. Finally, as was eventually decided by the Court of
King's Bench in 1822, neither the right to hold such a Court,
nor its jurisdiction in petty actions, was lost by mere non-user ;
so that it could be revived after a lapse of half a century. 2
We have said above that the lawyers declared the Court
Baron to be a private jurisdiction of the Lord of the Manor,
and not a public tribunal. But we must warn the student
against a misunderstanding by which we ourselves were long
misled. When it was held that the Court Baron was of
private, not of public nature, those words were used in a
sense very different from that nowadays given to them. All
that the lawyers meant was that the Court Baron was not
a Court of the King, to be held only by his authority or
subject to his will. What the modern student has to bear
in mind is that the Court Baron, however little of its power
it may have owed to the King, had within its sphere no small
part of the administration of the common affairs of the
inhabitants of the Manor. It was, in fact, an organ of local
government, alike legislative, executive, and judicial in
function, with attributes that we shall, in our subsequent
analysis, find of considerable interest. It was the Court
Baron, and not the Court Leet, that had jurisdiction over the
commonfield agriculture that survived, in many cases, down
to the nineteenth century, and over the common pastures and
wastes that were destined in certain places to become streets
of dwelling-houses, market-places, wharves, and docks. It
was the Court Baron, and not the Court Leet, that could
claim authority -over fisheries and weirs, and generally over
the banks and channels of rivers and estuaries, out of which
1 Close Roll of 18 Henry III. ; see The Law of Copyholds, by 0. I. Elton and
H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition, 1893, p. 300.
2 R. v. Steward of Manor of Havering atte Bower, 1822 ; in Reports of Cases,
etc., by E. V. Barnewall and E. H. Alderson, 1822, vol. v. pp. 691-692 ; Reports
of Cases, etc., by James Dowling and A. Ryland, 1823, vol. ii. pp. 176-177.
THE COURT BARON 19
might spring prescriptive rights to tolls and dues. It was
the Court Baron, and not the Court Leet, that provided the
tribunal for the trial of petty actions for debt and trespass,
which we shall see figuring prominently among the Courts
by which the autonomy of Manorial Boroughs and Municipal
Corporations was built up. It was the Court Baron, and
not the Court Leet, that chose the Eeeve, the chief local
officer of the little community, who became responsible for
collecting the money tributes due to the Lord of the Manor,
exactly as the chief officer of the Manorial Borough 1 was
responsible to the Lord for .his quit-rents, or as the Mayor
of the fully-developed Municipal Corporation was answerable
for the " farm " of the Borough to the King. Finally, it was
the Court Baron, not the Court Leet, that contributed what
became the predominant principle of eighteenth - century
Local Government common consent and local autonomy
the Homage being, unlike the Leet Jury, themselves the
judges of the Court, interpreting, and therefore developing,
the Customs of the Manor as if these concerned themselves
alone, without the intervention of the Lord or his Steward,
and without reference to the interests of the rest of the
community. To the lawyer the Court Baron of the Manor
might seem essentially a law court, " the lowest judicial unit
of the Kingdom." But " in practice though primarily a law
court, the Manor Court would also serve as the administrative
and, in some sense, as the legislative organ of the community
of the Manor." 2 " The majority of homagers," noted a learned
Steward of the seventeenth century, " sworn at the Lord's
Court, for the better preservation of order, have, time beyond
memory of all men, used, with the Lord's consent, to make
By-laws, as well for the stinting and limiting the number,
as for appointing times for the putting the tenants' cattle
into the common pastures, wastes, and commons of the
Manor. And- such By-laws, made with reasonable penalties,
and clauses for distress for such penalties, have, by the time
aforesaid, been binding and concluding to all the tenants of
the Manor. The like orders and consent bind for the mending
1 See Chap. III. "The Manorial Borough."
2 History of Municipal Government in Liverpool, by Prof. Ramsay Muir,
1906, p. 2.
20 THE LORD'S COURT
of tenants' ways, and for the establishment of the common
good, and preventing of public annoyances, provided that such
orders crossed not the law or statutes of the Kingdom." l It
may be that it was the Court Leet and View of Frankpledge
that gradually assumed the greater prominence in those places
in which the Lord's Court continued, without further develop-
ment, to be the local governing authority. But it is the
constitution and legal attributes of the Court Baron that we
shall presently find of equal, if not of greater, significance
in our description of the Manorial Boroughs and our analysis
of the Municipal Corporations.
Such being the importance of what we may term the
Court Baron aspect of the Lord's Court, we may be pardoned
for drawing the attention of the sociological student to one
of its attributes, unnoticed by the lawyers, which had, we
suggest, an adverse influence on its eighteenth-century develop-
ment. The common agreement upon which rests the authority
of a modern Municipality is that of inhabitants at large that
is, of the consumers of its services. The Court Baron, on
the other hand, was essentially the organ, not of the citizens
or consumers as such, but of the occupying owners of
agricultural land that is to say, it belonged to the genus of
Associations of Producers. 2 The student of other types of
Associations of Producers will not be surprised to find the
Homage resenting the intrusion of " foreigners " and the
invasion of the commons by " landless residents." The same
spirit led to the exaction of tolls and dues in the market and
at the landing stage from those who had not been admitted
as tenants of the Manor ; and led, even in unincorporated
villages, to the Reeve, as representative of the Homage,
1 History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824, vol. i. p. 179
(quoting a document of 1662).
2 By the term "Associations of Producers" we mean societies or com-
munities of persons who are engaged in the production of commodities or
services, and who themselves own or control the whole or part of the material
instruments of production, or are otherwise self-directing. The best known
examples of such associations are the Merchant and Trade Gilds of the Middle
Ages and, in our own generation, what are called Productive Co-operative
Societies or "self-governing workshops" (to be distinguished from the so-called
Distributive Co-operative Societies or "stores," which do also much production,
and are Associations of Consumers). See, on the whole subject, The Co-
operative Movement in Oreat Britain, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb),
1900.
THE COURT LEET 21
charging a fee to such persons for the privilege of opening
a shop. It was, we suggest, the fact that the Court Baron
had the attributes that belong to an Association of Producers,
that caused it, as we shall see in our account of the Manorial
Boroughs, to develop into a close body, renewing itself by
co-option, from which the ordinary inhabitant was excluded.
(c) The Court Led
The Court Leet 1 and View of Frankpledge was, so the
lawyers held, not a private incident to a Manor, but a public
jurisdiction, a Franchise assumed to have been obtained by
Royal Grant to the Lord of the Manor, with a view to spare
his tenants the trouble of attending the Sheriff's Turn.
Such a grant can seldom be traced except in Charters to
Boroughs ; but in Manors in which a Court Leet had actually
been held time out of mind the grant was presumed. The
Court Leet, unlike the Court Baron, was a Court of Record,
and the Steward who presided was not merely its officer but
an integral part of the Court itself, 2 empowered summarily to
punish by fine any contempt committed in Court, and even
to commit the offender to prison in default of payment. He
could take a recognisance of the peace ; 3 and, in fact, " in
matters within the jurisdiction of the Leet, the Steward," so
the lawyers held, " had [in Court] powers equal with the
Justices " themselves in their own Courts. 4 It was a char-
1 " The word Leet ... is not to be found either in the Saxon law or in Glanvil,
Bracton, Briton, Fleta, or the Mirror (our most ancient law writers), nor in any
statute prior to 27 Edward III. c. 28 " (The Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by
J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 1 ; A Short Treatise of the History and Anti-
quities and Jurisdiction of all the Courts of Law, by Henry Aldridge, 1835, p.
193). The word seems to be of East Anglian local usage. "Towards the
end of the thirteenth century the word Leet (leta), which seems to have spread
outward from the East Anglian counties, was becoming a common name for
such a Court " (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland,
vol. i. book ii. ch. iii. sec. 5, p. 568 ; see also Leet Jurisdiction in the City of
Norwich, by Rev. W. Hudson, 1892 ; Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, by F. W.
Maitland, 1889, pp. xvi and Ixxiii ; The Coventry Leet Book, by M. D. Harris,
1907).
2 Holroyd v. Breare and Holmes, in Reports of Cases, etc., by E. V. Barnewell
and E. H. Alderson, 1822, vol. ii. p. 473.
8 7 Henry VI. c. 12 (1429) ; 10 Henry VI. c. 8 (1432) ; 11 Henry VI. c. 7
(1433).
4 Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896,
p. 441. For instances of the Court Leet becoming indistinguishable from the
Petty or General Sessions of the Peace, see pp. 350-352.
22 THE LORD'S COURT
acteristic feature of this Court that it had to be attended by
the people at large. In legal theory the obligation to attend
and, if required, to take part in the proceedings extended to
every male resident within the Manor over twelve some
said over sixteen years of age, who had dwelt there for a
year and a day. It was, perhaps, with reference to this
obligation that the 42nd section of Magna Charta had
provided that these Courts were " to be held but twice a year,
a mouth after Michaelmas and Easter." But though any
" View of Frankpledge " or enrolment in tithings had long
since been obsolete, the roll of the inhabitants was, in 1689,
still supposed to be called over, and every one had to answer
to his name. 1 New residents (or perhaps only new freeholders)
1 " You must call to the Constable for a Leet Bill, which should compre-
hend all inhabitants of the Leet within the precinct above the age of 16 "
(The Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th
edition, 1728, p. 18). The Statute of Marlboroiigh (52 Henry III. c. 10)
excused from attendance at the Sheriff's Turn, and impliedly at the Lord's Court,
peers, ecclesiastics, and women. Prior to that statute it seems that every
one over 1 2, including servants and women, had to attend (Practical Treatise on
Copyhold- Tenure, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 438). But tenants
in Ancient Demesne were always held to be exempted (The Law of Ancient
Demesne, by J. P. Yeatman, 1894 ; Villainage in England, by P. Vinogradoff,
1892, p. 89 ; TJw Manor and Manorial Records, by N. J. Hone, 1906, ch.
vii.). How long the View of Frankpledge was kept up is uncertain. Long
after the Lord's Court had lost its power of trying felonies, a great authority
incidentally tells us that it "retained the duty of viewing the frankpledges . . .
which it exercised, it is said, as la 1 e as 10 Henry VI. (1432) in Cornwall"
(The Tenures of Kent, by C. I. Elton, 1867, p. 154). We owe to Mr. Seebohm an
even later example. In 1470 we see the Court at Hitchin (Herts) still admit-
ting men into " the tithing of the Lord the King " ; and presenting that " John
Crouche is of the age of 12 years and more, and has resided within the precinct
of this View for one year and beyond, and is out of the tithing of the Lord the
King. Therefore he is in mercy, and it is ordered to distrain him to put him-
self on the tithing of the Lord the King " (translation from MS. Court Rolls,
Hitchin, portfolio 177, No. 60, in Public Record Office). We do not know
whether this fining of absentees from the Lord's Court, as we see it in the
eighteenth century, can be connected with the mediaeval chevagium(see Select Pleas
in Manorial Courts, by Professor F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. xxxi). "The
strict theory of the law," we are told, " seems to have required that all the
frankpledges should attend the view ; but as a matter of fact it was usual
for none but the Chief Pledges to attend ; often, however, they had to bring
with them a sum of money which was accepted in lieu of the production
of their tithings " (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and F. W.
Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 557). It may be, as has been suggested, that the
Leet Jury was composed of, or in some way represents, the Headboroughs, and
that these were the heads of tithings, or Capital Pledges. In some cases, how-
ever, there seems to be no connection between the Jury and either Headboroughs
or Capital Pledges ; and the fining of all tenants of the Manor seems often to
be unconnected with the Leet Jury. These and other customary payments to
the Manor require further study. There is, for instance, the frequent custom of
THE COURT LEET 23
were then "sworn to be faithful and loyal to the King," all
absentees being subject to a fine. Here the legal function of
the ordinary inhabitant ceased. But the Bailiff or Reeve had
to summon not only the inhabitants generally, but also two or
three dozen of the more respectable and substantial residents
to serve as jurymen, either for the occasion of the coming
Court or Lawday, or, according to local custom, sometimes
during the ensuing twelve months. The principal functions
of this Jury were inquisitorial and judicial. It was " charged "
on its appointment to discover all persons who had committed
any offence against the commonweal, whether contrary to the
lawful customs of the Manor or to the law of the land ; and
to " present " such offenders to the Court. For though the
Court Leet was practically the Court of the Lord of the Manor,
and was presided over by his Steward, it administered, so the
lawyers said, not the Lord's will but the King's justice, and
the Lord himself could be " presented " in his own Court for
a breach of the law and condemned accordingly. The Court
Leet was, in fact, a local criminal court as the lawyers said,
the King's Court holden by the Lord, but the King did not
"common fine," payment made annually either by every tenant or resident,
whether present in Court or not, or by the officers of particular townships on
behalf of their townships. There is much reason to suppose, as Ritson declared,
that this " common fine," or " certum letoe," was a payment made to excuse all
the suitors but the Chief Pledges from appearing at the Court (Jurisdiction of
the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 120). At the Easter Leet of
the Manor of Wimbledon (Surrey) " the Headboroughs pay a Common Fine, for
Putney, 6s. 8d. ; Roehampton, 2s. ; Mortlake, 8s. 4d. ; Barnes, 5s. ; Wimbledon,
formerly 8s. 4d., but abated by reason of the parsonage to 6s. 8d." (The Law
of Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. pp. 554-556). In a
case brought before the Court of King's Bench a customary exaction of ten shil-
lings each from the jurymen as Chief Pledges was upheld (Term Reports, vol. ii.
p. 42 ; Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 1816, p. 100). On the
other hand, this view does not explain the cases in which a payment is exacted from
all and sundry, whether they attend or not. " Cert Money and Common Fine,"
says an eighteenth-century writer, " is a fine paid by resiants or residents of several
Manors to the lords thereof, for the certain keeping of the Leet, and sometimes
to the Hundred (as the Manor of Hook in Dorsetshire pays Cert Money to the
Hundred of Egerdon). And Common Fine is a certain sum of money which
the residents within the View of some Leets paid to the Lord thereof, called in
divers places Headsilver, in others Cert Money and Headpence ; and was first
granted to the Lord towards the charge of his purchase of the Court Leet,
whereby the residents had now the liberty of doing their Suit Royal nearer
home, and not be compelled to go to the Sheriffs Turn. As in the Manor of
Sheapshead in the County of Leicester, every resident pays a penny per head to
the Court held after Michaelmas, which is there called Common Fine" (The
Complete Steu-ard, by John Mordant, 1761, vol. i. p. 37). Other synonyms
were " King's Silver," "Headmouey," and " Chief Silver."
24 THE LOR EPS COURT
interfere either by appointing judges or other officers, or by
reviewing or controlling its proceedings. It was the Lord's
own Steward who presided over the Court, selected the
inhabitants who were to serve as the Jury, instructed them
as to their duties, and appointed, on their nomination, the
Constable, the Aleconners, and the other public officers of the
Manor, whilst all the fines imposed went into the pocket of
the Lord, or were the perquisites of the Manorial officers.
The Court Leet differed, however, markedly from a
modern criminal court both in its procedure and in the
practical range of its jurisdiction. The Court, it was assumed,
would act without instigation from any prosecutor, and needed
to issue no summons to a defendant. Everybody was, in
fact, presumed to be in attendance. The Jury presented
offenders out of their own knowledge, sometimes aided by the
reports of the various officers, and their presentments appar-
ently condemned such offenders, even in their absence. There
was no necessity to hear witnesses, and neither attorney nor
counsel would be present, 1 though the Court would listen to
a defendant in extenuation or denial of the accusation. In
their presentment the Jury not only declared the defendant
guilty of the offence mentioned, but also indicated the appro-
priate penalty. As the Court had no gaol at its command, and,
as seventeenth-century lawyers held, no power of imprison-
ment, 2 this penalty nearly always took the form of a money
1 " When they are discharged the same day," says Ritson, "it would seem
necessary for them to proceed chiefly upon evidence, and indeed there is gener-
ally, if not always, a proclamation for that purpose. . . . The proceedings
. . . are without expense, the suitor pays no fees, and advocates or attorneys
of course never enter it " (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd
edition, 1816, pp. 23-24). But, as above mentioned, lawyers did sometimes
attend the Lord's Court, which was at once Court Baron and Court Leet.
2 Coke, who always took a limited view of the power of the Lord's Court,
seems first to have asserted this (The Compleat Copyholder, by Sir E. Coke,
1630), and it became accepted. "The Court Leet," says a law book of 1745,
quoting Sir William Scroggs, " is the only Court which may fine but not
imprison" (The Justice of Peace, by Theodore Barlow, 1745, p. 159). The
stocks for drunkards (4 James I. c. 5), the pillory and tumbril for bakers and
brewers (51 Henry III. st. 1, c. 6), and the ducking-stool and brank (or scold's
bridle) were, however, available, and seem to have been lawfully inflicted as
punishments by the Court Leet (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph
Ritson, 1816, p. 12), at any rate in the Middle Ages (see for a case in 1290,
Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, *by F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. 98). Ritson com-
plained that Coke had taken an unduly limited view of the Court's powers
(Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph Ritson, 1816, p. 19).
THE COURT LEET 25
fine or " amercement." The presentment was then referred
by the Steward to two Affeerors, 1 or officers appointed to
" affeer " the amercement, by which was to be understood its
final assessment at a definite money penalty, usually less
than the maximum indicated for the particular class of offence.
Such a fine, if not at once paid in Court, had to be collected
by the Bailiffs, or Beadles, or " Serjeants " of the Manor, or, if
no such officers had been appointed, by the Constable, who,
with or without a Manorial distress warrant from the Steward,
had power to distrain on the goods of defaulters. 2 The pre-
sentment of the Jury, made in one form and received by the
Steward in Court, might be " retired " or reversed the same day,
if the Steward chose to allow it, by another Jury ; but was, so
the lawyers held, " the day passed, as true and sacred as the
Gospel," not subject to traverse or appeal, in that or any other
Court. 3 Even more peculiar in modern eyes was the scope of
the Court Leet's jurisdiction. As we see it in the legal text-
books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it had
already lost its authority over the great majority of criminal
offences. " Petty treasons and felonies," says Kitchin, " are
1 Whether the affeerors were chosen by the Steward or by the Jury is not
clear. In the Manor of Worplesdon (Surrey) it was customary, " for the Law-
day," for "one to be a freeholder, but if a Court without a Lawday " for both
to be copyholders (Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
vol. ii. pp. 559-561).
2 "A Steward may by parole command a Bailiff to make distress " (Treatise
of the Antiquity . . . of the Ancient Courts of Leet, by Robert Powell, 1642, p.
33). "The Lord may have an action of debt or distrain for it of common
right ; and such distress may be taken in the streets, and be sold " (The Justice
of Peace, by Theodore Barlow, 1745, p. 159).
3 Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph Ritson, 1816, pp. 9-10. But
though not subject to appeal, or, strictly speaking, to traverse, a presentment
that affected the party's freehold property might be made the subject of com-
plaint to the Court of King's Bench, which that Court would try. Moreover,
that Court's jurisdiction in other matters was not ousted by the fact that they
had been dealt with in the Lord's Court. Thus, when the Jury of the Lord's
Court of the Manor of St. Giles's in the Fields on complaint of the keeping of
over 400 hogs by a distiller near St. Giles's Pound, with a stench that was
abominable, had formally presented that this was no nuisance, such a decision
did not prevent an indictment being brought in the Court of King's Bench,
when the Jury found that it was a nuisance (R. v. Smart, 1734 ; see notes
of trial among the Hardwicke MSS. ; Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, by
G. Harris, 1847, vol. i. pp. 265-270). The lawyers drew a distinction between
offences. It was said by Hale, " that if there be a presentment in a Leet for a
personal misdemeanour it is a conviction, and conclusive ; but if it be for a
nuisance or any matter that concerns freehold, the party may come up after-
wards and traverse" (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 1816, p. 140).
26 THE LORD'S COURT
enquirable and presentable in a Leet, but not punishable
there." All matters of indictment had, indeed, been trans-
ferred to the assizes by a statute of Edward IV. The Court
Leet, meeting only once or twice a year, with its cumbrous
machinery of universal attendance and its inability to impose
sentences of imprisonment, was obviously unfitted for dealing
with petty police cases. The whole business of the conser-
vancy of the King's peace, including, therefore, every ase of
assault, was, in fact, taken over by the Justices of the Peace
in Petty or Quarter Sessions. It was to these Justices, and
not to the Court Leet, that Parliament throughout the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries confided the jurisdiction with
regard to the new statutory offences, which were superseding so
many of the old Common Law misdemeanours. Thus, by 1689,
there remained to the Court Leet, in the lawyer's view, little more
than the petty delinquencies connected with the Assize of Ale,
the Manorial market, and the use of the highways, together
with the wide and elastic offence denoted by a common
nuisance.
To the modern student, the Suppression of Nuisances
seems a comparatively insignificant part of Local Government.
But to the lawyer and the administrator of 1689 it comprised,
along with the Eelief of the Poor, practically the whole of
local administration. As we shall see in the subsequent
volume, in which we deal with the Suppression of Nuisances,
this was the root out of which sprang such services as the
Maintenance of Roads, the Drainage of Towns, the Paving and
Cleansing and Lighting of Streets, and the whole of what we
now call Public Health. " A common nuisance," says a con-
temporary lawyer, " seems to be an offence against the public,
either by doing a thing which tends to the annoyance of all
the King's subjects, or by neglecting to do a thing which the
common good requires." l When we come to describe the
regulative activity sanctioned by this definition we shall see
that it covers an amazing range of requirements, both positive
and negative; each generation with or without express
direction from the Legislature dropping out some offences
and adding others, the categories now swelling, now contract-
1 Justice of the Peace, by R. Burn, 6th edition, 1758, vol. ii. p. 432 ; citing
a dictum of Hawkins.
THE COURT LEET 27
ing, so that the volume of individual personal activity dealt
with was always varying. Thus, in the Courts Leet of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we find the Stewards directing
the Juries to present persons guilty of " eavesdropping " or
" theftbote," of maintenance or barratry, of " being a common
and turbulent brawler " or " a common scold," of " selling
unbaited beef " or " gashing hides." In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the more common " annoyances of all the
King's subjects," to which the Juries directed their attention,
were unscoured ditches or unmended highways, trees over-
hanging the road, refusing to pave the street in front of one's
house, or declining to serve as Ale -taster, Dog -muzzier, or
Scavenger. From the middle of the eighteenth century down
to the very end of the period with which we are dealing, we
find, in the roll of presentments, quite other kinds of personal
conduct stigmatised as common nuisances such as the
emission of smoke, heaping refuse on unoccupied land, per-
mitting privies and cesspools to drain into the newly-made
sewers, leaving cellar flaps open and unguarded, retaining
hanging signs, permitting dangerous bulls to go at large,
keeping mastiffs unmuzzled, or allowing pigs to roam in the
streets. In fact, it is difficult to find any kind of personal
conduct, whether intrinsically innocent or plainly criminal,
and whether or not expressly included among statutory
offences, which might not, at one period or another, have
found its way, as a common nuisance, into the presentments
of a Court Leet Jury.
Closely connected with this judicial business was the
power assumed to be possessed by the Court Leet, equally
with the Court Baron, of making new By-laws, binding on all
the residents within the Manor. The earlier legal writers
found the Court Leet making such By-laws, and accepted this
function as warranted by tradition. Gradually it became of
undoubted authority. " It seemeth that of common right,"
wrote Dr. Burn in 1756, "any Court Leet, with the assent of
the tenants, may make By-laws under certain penalties, in
relation to matters properly within the cognizance of such
Court, such as reparation of the highways and the like." 1
Within what limits this By-law-making power would have
1 Justice of tlw Peace, by Dr. R. Burn, vol. iii. p. 240 of edition of 1820.
28 THE LORDS COURT
been, in any particular generation, upheld by the King's
Courts must remain uncertain, as the point cannot be said
to have been very definitely determined. But whether or not
the King's Courts would have upheld their dicta, we find the
legal manuals unhesitatingly advising the Stewards that such
By-laws might be made.
The Court Leet exercised also another important function
which we do not nowadays associate with a criminal tribunal.
It had the duty of appointing whatever staff of public officers
to attend to the government of the locality that custom
required. There were, first of all, the officers charged with
" conserving " the King's peace within the Manor. In a small
rural Manor this meant only the appointment, year by year, of
one of the residents to serve as Constable. In larger parishes
there might be several Constables for different hamlets or
tithings ; they might be called " Chief Pledges," " Boroheads,"
" Borsholders," " Tithingmen," " Deciners," " Headboroughs,"
" Thirdboroughs," or by other ancient titles of which the
original meaning had been forgotten ; but their duty was
always to preserve order -in the little community. The legal
form seems to have been for the Jury to present one or more
persons as liable to serve the particular office, and for the
Court that is the Steward to appoint one or more of the
persons so presented. In addition to these officers, particular
Manors had, by custom, to appoint such others as Aleconners
or Ale-tasters, Carnivals or Carnals, the Finder, Pinner, or
Poundkeeper, the Dyke-reeve or Moss-reeve or Wall-reeve, and
the Burleymen or Bylawmen. Sometimes in an old " forest "
district the Court had to appoint a " Greave of the Forest,"
and various subordinate forest officers. In the numerous
unincorporated market towns it was the Court Leet that had
to appoint the Bread-weighers and Viewers or Inspectors of
Weights and Measures, the Market-lookers, the Searchers and
Sealers of Leather, the Pecksealers, and the indispensable
Bellman or Town-crier ; whilst in populous towns there might
also be Town Scavengers, Dog-muzzlers, Clerks of the Wheat,
Fish, and Butchery Markets, or even, as at Lewes, a " Clerk of
the Spars and Withs." l The whole official staff of a Court
1 The History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824-32,
p. 174.
THE COURT LEET 29
Leet might thus be very numerous in exceptional cases even
exceeding a hundred. 1 In all these offices service was com-
pulsory upon all adult male residents within the Manor, and
could be enforced by summary fine and distraint on any
recalcitrants. It was taken for granted by the lawyers that
every respectable male resident was liable under legal obliga-
tion to serve the Manor in his turn, 2 without salary or other
remuneration. It was, in fact, no part of the conception of
local government, at the time when the Court Leet was in its
prime, that there should be anything that we should now call
the Municipal administration of public services, that is to say,
the employment of paid officers to do positive services for the
common enjoyment. Every service requisite for the simple
life of the little community was a duty imposed, as a condition
of tenure or an obligation of status, upon some individual
resident or another. If every man did his duty in obeying
the law of the land and the customs of the Manor if he
neither broke the King's peace nor committed a public
nuisance all would be well. But as men were perverse and
weak, there would be defaulters unless some one was responsible
for seeing that the Law and the By-laws were adhered to. In
the old system of frankpledge, the " Capital Pledge " was
apparently held responsible for his " tithing," or group of
inhabitants, on all counts. In the Court Leet, as we find
it in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, each Manorial
officer was technically responsible for presenting the com-
mission of one specified offence throughout the whole Manor.
The Jury was responsible, on the information given by these
officers, for presenting and amercing all offenders. " The soul
of the system," says a learned antiquary, " consisted in the
universal obligation of every member of a tithing [that is, in
theory, every adult male] to disclose and bring to punishment
every breach of the laws and customs by which the community
1 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. vi. p. 241 (Court
of 5th October 1686, when 110 officers were appointed).
2 By Common Law, the Deputy Steward of the Salford Court explained in
1835, the choice of persons to serve as Constable rested with the Court, unless
there was a valid custom to the contrary. Such a custom existed in the town-
ship of Urmston, the "nomination of Constables by house-roll, so that each
person in the township bears the burden in his turn " (Manchester Times,
1835).
3 o THE LORD'S COURT
was bound." * It is this note of the social obligation of every
citizen, pervading both the legislation and the legal manuals of
the sixteenth century, that we find characterising, in particular,
the government of numerous little communities by the Court
Leet of the King holden by the Lord of the Manor.
1 Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich, by Rev. William Hudson, 1892,
p. Ixxv.
CHAPTER II
THE COURT IN RUINS
WE now pass from the clear-cut theories of contemporary
lawyers to the actual constitution and working of the Lord's
Court between 1689 and 1835. It will be at once apparent
that we are dealing with an institution that is nowhere in its
prime, but in every instance falling into decay. In some
Manors the Lord's Court still provided the principal machinery
of Local Government; in others there survived only a mere
shred of a constitution. In many districts it is the manage-
ment of the land that has passed away ; in others, the function
of trying petty cases of debt and trespass ; in others, again, it
is the power of fining nuisance -mongers or of appointing
Constables that has been lost. What will become abundantly
clear is that the Lord's Court, as it actually existed, differed
widely from the lawyer's view of what it ought to have been.
In many of the cases that we shall describe there was no
separation, either in constitution or procedure, between what
the lawyers termed the Court Baron of the Lord, and the
Court Leet of the King. In these cases we see one and the
same Court, in a single undivided sitting, transacting, through
one set of officers and one Jury, without distinguishable order
or precedence, all the business of the little community, whether
this business related to the maintenance of the Lord's rights,
the conveyance of a plot of land from seller to purchaser, the
mutual arrangement of the common rights of the tenants, the
keeping up of fences and dykes, the crops to be sown in
particular fields, the dates at which the various agricultural
operations were to begin, the trial of civil actions, the present-
ment of public nuisances and minor crimes, the fining of
31
3 2 THE COURT IN RUINS
offenders, and the choice and appointment of an indefinite
variety of local public officers. We find, in fact, in the
majority of our examples, simply an Undifferentiated Court
This absence of the theoretical differentiation between Court
Baron and Court Leet will become apparent to the reader of
the descriptions alike of the Courts of the Hundred, Honour, or
Barony, and those of the Manor or Borough in the Middle
Ages, it may be said, all tribunals were Undifferentiated Courts
but we shall recur to it specifically when we come to the
Court of the Manor.
(a) The Hierarchy of Courts
The actual constitution of the Lord's Court was, however,
in some places more complicated than is described by the
lawyers. We discover still existing in some parts of the
country between 1689 and 1835 a curious array of Courts
above Courts, and jurisdictions within jurisdictions. We come
across Hundred Courts, Honour Courts, Soke Courts, Barony
Courts, Knight's Courts, or Forest Courts, wielding authority
over large districts within which are also various distinct
Halmote Courts, Courts Baron, Courts Leet, or Borough Courts.
In the ruinous condition into which these Courts had, by 1689,
everywhere fallen, we cannot with any certainty unravel what
relationship they had once borne to each other, except that
the smaller Courts stood in a certain position of inferiority
to those of wider jurisdiction. We cannot, for instance, say
that the relationship was ever one of Courts of First Instance
and Courts of Appeal there was, we imagine, in mediaeval
jurisdiction, taking the form of punishing defaults, nothing
corresponding to the customary modern right of a defendant
in a civil action to appeal against a decision of a Court of
First Instance. 1 Nor do we find evidence of any right of
1 Whether such a right of appeal had ever existed we do not assume to
decide. In one great ecclesiastical jurisdiction, at least, such a right of hearing
appeals was, in 1284, strenuously asserted on behalf of the Hundred Court,
and as strenuously denied on behalf of the Court of the Manor. At Crondal,
in Hampshire, where the Manor belonged to a priory, it was claimed by the
Bishop of Winchester, as Lord of the Hundred Court, that "where the Prior
and his Steward and his other ministers, for a bribe, or through partiality, or
in any other manner, refuse to do justice [in the Court of the Manor] to any
plaintiff of the Hundred of Crundale, the Lord Bishop of Winchester and his
Steward have power at the first Hundred [Court] at Blackheathfield to inquire,
terminate, and amend this wrong." To this the Convent, as owner of the Manor,
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 33
appeal to an outside or higher jurisdiction in the civil suits
between tenants of the Manor. But it seems clear that, in
some cases at any rate, the presentments of the inferior Courts
were enforced by actions taken at the head Court ; moreover,
there is reason to believe that the head Court did not always
refrain from dealing with cases which might have been within
the jurisdiction of the inferior Court ; and it certainly had
some sort of jurisdiction in default. 1 " It seems a good
prescription," says Sir William Scroggs, " for a Grand Leet
(to which other inferior Leets may be subordinate, as that
to the Torn) to oblige the Chief Pledges and a certain number
of the resiants or inhabitants of every town, etc., within its
precinct to appear at every such Grand Leet, to inquire into
such offences as were not inquired into in the inferior Leet." 2
We may perhaps infer that if an offence had not been presented
in the Court of a petty Manor, it might be presented in the
Court of the Honour or Grand Leet of some wider jurisdiction,
if such existed ; and if not presented at any subordinate Court,
then at the Court of the Hundred. 3 Hence, we venture
though without desiring in any way to imply a complete
subordination of one to the other to describe these interest-
ing series as Hierarchies of Courts.
made answer ' ' that it is altogether to be denied, because he [the Bishop] has no
right to intrude himself in the Prior's Courts ; because if bondmen, they have
no refuge except to their Lord, and if freemen, the King alone and his Justices
ought to hear and terminate complaints of a false judgment." It was admitted
that the tenants of the Manor owed suit and service to the Bishop's Hundred
Court, which held the View of Frankpledge for the whole Hundred ; and it
was eventually agreed that the tenants should not be called to account in the
Court of the Manor for anything already dealt with by the Hundred Court. We
gather that the jurisdiction in appeal or in default was left undecided (Records
and Documents relating to the Hundred and Manor of Crondal, by F. J. Baigent,
Hampshire Record Society, Part I. p. 16).
1 Ritson seems to have been unable to conceive of a Hierarchy of Courts.
He asserts that the jurisdiction of the " Leet of the Hundred " was only over so
much of the Hundred as was not within the jurisdiction of the Court Leet of a
Manor ; and similarly with the Sheriff's Turn (Jurisdiction of the Court Leet, by
J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 5).
2 The Practice of Courts Leet aiid Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edi-
tion, 1 728, p. 3 ; see History of English Law, by F. W. Maitland, 1 895, vol. i. p. 569.
3 Practical Treatise on the Law of Copyholds, by John Scriven, 7th edition,
1896, p. 436. It is noteworthy that, in the sixteenth century, the Hundred
was still regarded as the jurisdiction next above that of the Manor. In 1555,
when it was provided that the Courts Leet should deal with offences under the
first Highways Act (2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 8), the Stewards of Leets were
to render returns of all estreats and fines, not to the Justices of the Peace or to
any County officer, but to the Bailiff or High Constable of the Hundred.
VOL, II. FT. I D
34 THE CO UR T IN R UINS
For the most remarkable of these Hierarchies of Courts
we must go to the West of England. The wide area of the
Vale of Berkeley, comprising the ancient Hundred of that
name in the County of Gloucester, had been ruled over, time
out of mind, by a series of mutually related Courts of the Lord
of Berkeley Castle. There was, first, the Hundred Court for
the whole area; then the numerous Halmotes or Halimotes,
the Lord's Courts for the separate Manors within the Hundred ;
and, finally, certain differentiated Courts, called Borough Courts
or Leets, held in and for certain favoured townships, which
had, by ancient seignorial grants, been constituted Boroughs. 1
In 1689 this Hierarchy of Courts, which had existed
" time out of mind," was still in full, though somewhat formal,
operation. Twice a year the Lord's Steward issued his precept
to the -Bailiff of the Hundred, directing him to summon to
the Court of the Hundred and Honour of Berkeley also called
the Court Leet or Law Day " to be holden at the Booth
Hall in the town of Berkeley " ; to command the attendance
of the persons who were to form the Jury these in 1733
were thirty in number ; in 1V34, forty-two ; drawn from a score
of different Manors, and to require the Constables of the
Manors and the Tithingmen of the several parishes and
townships that " they give notice of holding the same in
the respective parish churches on the Sunday next before
the Leet," in order that not they only, but also all who
1 For information as to the Courts of the Hundred of Berkeley we are indebted
to the courtesy of the Earl of Berkeley, of his land steward, Mr James Peter,
and of Mr Hutton, steward of his Lordship's Courts, who kindly permitted con-
sultation of the records in the muniment room at Berkeley Castle ; as well as to
our friend Miss Hadley, Archivist to the London County Council, who was good
enough to devote part of a holiday to the work. A detailed description of the
Hundred Court at Berkeley in 1890 will be found in Gloucestershire Notes and,
Queries, vol. iv. p. 27 ; and some account of the Hundred Rolls in ibid. vol.
v. pp. 85-88. See also Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Common Law
Courts, 1833 ; House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and of
Courts of Request, 1840 ; The Berkeley Manuscripts, by Sir John Maclean,
3 vols., 1883-85 (Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society) ; and (for the
two Boroughs) First Report of Municipal Corporation Commissioners, 1835,
Appendix, vol. i. p. 19 ; Report of Royal Commission on Uureformed Corpora-
tions, 1880 ; History of the Town of Berkeley, by Rev. John Fisher, 1856 and
1864; "Corporation Insignia," in Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vol. v. p.
519 ; and " Extinct Corporations of Wotton and Berkeley," in Notes and Queries,
7th ser. vol. ii. p. 64 ; A New History of Gloucesterslwre, by Samuel Rudder,
1779, pp. 846-854; and Historical Notes relating, to the Borough of IVotton,
by W. H. Wright, 1872 (in Cheltenham Public Library).
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 35
had business at the Court, might be present. The Tithingman
of Stinchcombe we know not why had to bring with him
two men. In the manuscript " Precedent Book," which has
been the guide of many generations of Stewards, we can almost
see before us the whole procedure of this ancient tribunal.
The Steward opens the Court by calling on the Bailiff for a
return of the Jury, which, together with that of the Tithingmen
and Constables of Manors, is formally called over, and the
absentees fined ; for attendance is compulsory, and right down
to the middle of the nineteenth century the fines are enforced.
The Constable of Bevington comes into Court near the Steward,
and, half -bent, prays for the prosperity of the noble family
of the Berkeley s. The Tithingman of Woodmancote brings
a " tag " with which to tie up Lord Berkeley's " writings "
under penalty of ten shillings fine. The Jury is sworn, in
groups of four, one Bible being supplied to be held by each
group, and the King's Proclamation against Profaneness and
Immorality is read. The Steward delivers his charge to the
Court, directing the Jury to inquire into every conceivable
offence committed within the Hundred, from manslaughter
down to the robbing of hen-roosts, from the unlawful pursuit
of game to conspiracies by artificers, from felony to forestalling
and regrating all still declared to be " presentable " in this
Court, even if successive Stewards have felt obliged to sub-
stitute that word for " punishable." Then the Jury examines
into the state of repair of the highways and bridges, the
stopping -up or diversion of footpaths and watercourses, and
the obstruction of the roads by encroachments or laying of
timber. All those who can give information relating to any
of these delinquencies are commanded to give it then and
there in Court. Various officers of the Hundred continue
to be appointed, at any rate the Bailiff of the Hundred and
the Haywards of the several Manors, even after the appoint-
ment of others had been discontinued. Various Acts of
Parliament are solemnly read and proclaimed. The present-
ments made at the last previous Court are read over, and those
which are reported to have been complied with are crossed off.
Meanwhile the Jury has completed its new presentments, which
are written out by the Bailiff, and signed by the several jury-
men. The Constables make their returns, and are sworn to
36 THE COURT IN RUINS
the truth thereof. The Steward, with such formal solemnity
as he can command, then closes the Court. Other sittings of
the Court are held by the Steward every three weeks, to which
the subordinate Manors owe no attendance, though the free-
hold tenants of the Barony are supposed to be present and to
form the Court. The business of these three-weekly sittings,
for which a Jury of householders was summoned when required,
was, at any rate in the nineteenth century, confined to the trial
of civil actions for debt arising anywhere within the Hundred
of Berkeley. Throughout the whole of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries this ancient Court continued to be held,
its formalities and ceremonies gradually dropping off one by
one its criminal jurisdiction already gone before 1700, its
presentments of nuisances hardly lasting beyond 1800, 1 its
hearing of civil suits passing in the middle of the nineteenth
century to the new County Court, its fines for non-attendance 2
not surviving the third quarter of the nineteenth century;
until, in 1900, the thousand -years' record is broken, and the
Court is silently discontinued.
We pass now to the Halimotes, or Courts Baron, held
on behalf of the Lord of Berkeley in the several Manors of
the Hundred. These were either " General Halimotes," held
normally once a year, or " Special Halimotes," held when
required for some urgent business. These Courts, we are
informed, dealt during the eighteenth century only with
admissions of new copyholders, transfers of property, 3 and
1 In 1801 the owners of the land adjoining a road, and the owner of a
footbridge over a brook were presented for not repairing these highways ; and
the latter Avas amerced in forty shillings, leviable on his goods and chattels (MS.
Entry Book, Berkeley Hundred Court, October 1801).
2 " We present that it appears by the oath of John Neale, Bailiff of the said
Hundred, that he, the said Bailiff, did, on 16th April, go to the dwelling-house
of N. W. of Cambridge in the Parish of Slimbridge within the said Hundred, to
levy on his goods and chattels the sum of five shillings, being an amercement
imposed on him for not attending at the last Court Leet for the said Hundred to
servo on the Jury. And we present that it further appears to us by the oath of the
said Bailiff that R. U. brother to the said N. U. did on the said 16th April in-
stant pay to the said Bailiff the sum of five shillings in discharge of such amerce-
ment for the use of the said Lord of the said Hundred " (MS. Entry Book, Berkeley
Hundred Court, 18th April 1803). A similar entry occurs six months later.
3 Here is a typical entry. " N. W., gentleman, came to this Court by
warrant of attorney from W. W. H., and surrendered a close of pasture late
Symonds, held by the life of the said W. W. H., and the estate of W. W. H.,
after which proclamation was made and J. H., the life in reversion, came and
was admitted" (MS. Court Rolls, "Wotton, 20th October 1732).
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 37
purely Manorial offences. The Steward presided, the rest of
the Court consisting of what was called " the Homage," being
all the copyhold tenants of the particular Manor, who sat
without individual summons by virtue of their tenancy. In
the score or more of such Courts actually held in the year
1733, we noticed that the Homage numbered from two to
about a dozen. Attendance was compulsory, under penalty of
a fine of five shillings, which was usually " affeered " to one
shilling. 1 It is interesting, as bearing on the relationship of
the several Courts in this Hierarchy, to find it expressly stated
that the fines imposed by the Manor Courts were recovered
by action in the Berkeley Hundred Court at one of its three-
weekly sittings. 2 So far as we have ascertained, the only
business of these Halimotes during the eighteenth century
that can be said to relate to Local Government was their
appointment of a Eeeve of the Manor, who had power to
distrain on the cattle of the lands of any copyhold or lease-
hold tenant of the Manor for any amercement imposed by the
Court. 3 Service as Eeeve was compulsory on the copyhold
and leasehold tenants in rotation, " the furthest behind in
serving the office of Reeve " being always appointed, even if
a woman, or a group of officials like the Overseers of the
Poor, when these happened to have a copyhold or leasehold
workhouse. 4 But the office could always be served by a
1 MS. Precedent Book, Berkeley. At a Court Baron at Ham Manor
defaulters were amerced half a crown, affeered to one shilling (MS. Entry Book,
Court Baron, Ham, 14th October 1797); but at one at Cam, ten shillings,
affeered to two (ibid. Cam, 7th October 1833).
2 Gloucestershire, Notes and Queries, vol. iv. pp. 27-30.
3 " The Homage also present that the Reeve of this Manor in virtue of his
office may distrain for rent or for any amercement imposed in the Lord's Court
upon any copyholder or leaseholder, as well as the cattle of such copyholders or
leaseholders as of any other renting or occupying the copyhold or leasehold
land or tenements of such leaseholder or copyholder, provided the cattle be found
feeding upon the same copyhold or leasehold estate ; and further that the Reeve
is not bound to ascertain whose cattle those they may so distrain are, but
finding the same in or upon such copyhold or leasehold lands or tenements may
lawfully distrain them, as now and at all times out of memory hath been
accustomed to do " (MS. Entry Book, Courts Baron of many Manors, October
1810).
4 A woman is appointed Reeve "as being furthest behind," and serves by
deputy (MS. Court Roll Book, Court Baron of Hurst Manor, 14th October 1799).
"The Homage present that the Overseers of the Poor of this tithing are the
furthest behind in serving the office of Reeve for the house called the workhouse
on Berkeley Heath" (MS. Court Roll Book, Court Baron of Berkeley, 5th
October 1833).
38 THE COURT IN RUINS
" sufficient deputy." l Right down to the very end of the
nineteenth century these Manor Courts were still being held,
the Juries were presenting encroachments and Manorial
defaults, and petty officers were being appointed. 2
The third sort of Courts held within the Hundred of
Berkeley were those of the townships or so-called " Boroughs "
of Berkeley and Wotton. These were each styled " Court
Leet with View of Frankpledge and Court Baron," and separate
records were apparently in each case kept. But what was
actually held in each of these picturesque little towns was
only one Court. Once a year the Steward issued his precept
to the " Serjeant of the Borough," requiring him " to summon
all such persons as owe suit to the Court Leet and Court
Baron of the Borough," and to " warn a sufficient number of
the most able in the Borough to serve on the Grand Jury."
On the appointed day the Steward opened the Court by calling
on the Constable to read first the " Resiant Roll," with loud
proclamation to " all who live within the jurisdiction of this
Court " to come forward and do the suit they owe, and then
the " Jury Panel," those who did not answer to their names
being amerced. The jurymen were then sworn, in the same
groups of four that we have already described in the Hundred
Court. At each of these Courts there were two distinct
Juries, each usually exceeding a dozen in number the
Homage, composed of freehold, leasehold, and copyhold tenants
of the Manor ; and the " Grand Jury " or " Leet Jury," made
up merely of residents. The Juries both made presentments,
those of the Homage relating to surrenders and admissions,
conveyances and other property business, together with purely
Manorial defaults, such as suffering a messuage to decay,
allowing water from a new well to injure a neighbour's house,
or removing a gate and not replacing it, for which small
1 "At this Court it was found and presented by the Homage that G. S. is
the furthest behind in serving the office of Reeve for a close called Rowles Court
Leaze. We therefore order the said G. S. to take upon him the said office, either
by himself or his sufficient deputy, in one month's time under the penalty of
5, to be levied upon his goods and chattels, or to be recovered by action of
debt for the use of the Lord of the said Manor " (MS. Entry Book, Court
Baron of Slimbridge Manor, 12th October 1797).
2 See, for instance, the interesting description of the proceedings in 1887 of
"the Court for the Manor of Wotton Foreign," being 'so much of the Parish of
Wotton as lies outside the Borough, in Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, vol.
iv. pp. 27-30.
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 39
amercemeuts are imposed. The Grand Jury or Leet presented
all manner of nuisances relating to highways and water-
courses ; unlicensed alehouses, scolds and eavesdroppers ; the
delinquencies of butchers and bakers ; pound breach and
rescue of cattle ; and encroachments on the streets. The
officers appointed at the previous Court then made their
returns of offenders against the laws and Bylaws concerning
their several departments handing in small scraps of paper
on which we fear they had too often perfunctorily written
" omnia bene," or words to that effect. 1 But the Court would
sometimes insist on the office being executed. " We present
E. C. and E. S.," reports the Grand Jury of Wotton in 1713,
" for neglecting their office, particularly not taking up vagrants.
We do fine them ten shillings each." 2 Then the officers of the
Borough for the ensuing year were appointed, the Grand Jury
presenting three names as suitable persons to be Mayor, and
two names in the case of other officers, for the selection of one
by the Steward. For each of the two Boroughs the Court
appointed a Mayor, a Serjeant, a Constable, and one or two
Ale-tasters, Carnivals, and Searchers and Sealers of Leather. 3
Sometimes other officers a Scavenger or a Surveyor are
mentioned as acting under the appointment and direction of
the Mayor. At Berkeley it was the custom we observe it
still in force between 1797 and 1804 for the Court to recite
and declare every year a string of heterogeneous rights or By-
laws, on the presentment, be it noted, of the Homage Jury.
ISTo pigs are to go at large, under penalty of three and fourpence,
the Hayward being ordered to impound any found wandering
and to take his own fee of twopence ; no " soil, dung, apple
must, or any other stinking matter " is to be deposited in
1 "We have served the office to the best of our knowledge and we have
found it all well " (Return of Searchers and Sealers of Leather, Court Rolls of
Wotton, 2nd October 1714). "We present that we have found no flesh nor
fish that have been brought to our market and exposed for sale, upon our
vigilant search, but what hath been fit and wholesome for the body of man ;
and that we have nothing more to present at this time " (Return of Carnivals,
ibid. October 1709). "We have took care that the bulls have been baited, ere
that the meat hath been sold for the same, and we have carefully looked after
all other meat and fish" (ibid. 30th September 1710).
2 MS. Court Rolls, Wotton, 3rd October 1713.
3 Aldermen are mentioned (among the Leet Jury) both in Berkeley and in
Wotton (MS. Entry Book, Wotton Court, 20th October 1737 ; Berkeley Court,
21st October 1745). These were (in 1833 at Berkeley) the twelve members of
the close Town Council.
40 THE CO VR T IN R UINS
Berkeley streets, under penalty of a pound, and the Scavengers
are ordered to sweep up all dirt into heaps every Saturday,
for the officers of the Lord to carry it out of the Borough ; no
timber or other obstruction is to be put in the streets; the
common pasturage on Berkeley Heath is not to be usurped or
surcharged ; every person coming into the Borough to carry
on business or set up a household we gather without having
been born or perhaps apprenticed within the Borough is to
pay the Mayor six and eightpence as of old ; nobody but the
Mayor shall put up any stall in the Market or Fair ; the right
of all persons to a free wharf or landing place on the river is
declared and perpetuated ; and there is a stern prohibition of
taking in " inmates " to be a nuisance to the Borough. On
the other hand, at "VVotton, it is the Grand Jury that we see
making presentment of stopped-up watercourses, broken gullies,
and filth thrown down the gutter in " a time of flood to the
great annoyance of" a certain mill. A butcher is presented,
on the knowledge of one of the jurymen, " for putting stinking
meat to sale in our market " ; and other frequenters for selling
goods " by weight unlawful being too light." So, too, we find
the Grand Jury ordering that no persons shall stand with
goods in a certain passage on market day, that posts and rails
be set up for the protection of foot passengers, that obstructive
encroachments be removed, and that certain unlawful windows
that overlook the almshouses be stopped up. 1
Another case of a Hierarchy of Courts continuing in active
existence is presented by the great Manor of Taunton, extend-
ing over nearly the whole of Taunton " Deane," or Vale, in
Somerset. 2 Here the Manor transcended even the Hundred,
1 " Item, we order that for the future no person shall lay dung ... in
the street called . . . (MS. Court Rolls, Wotton) ; all persons that do claim
any right to the Chipping Well shall pay their proportion toward the repairing
the same, upon the pain of five shillings " (ibid.).
2 The Customs of the Manor of Taunton and Taunton Dcane, by Richard
Locke, 1785 ; The Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer,
1821 ; History of Taunton, by Joshua Toulmin, 1st edition, 1791, 2nd
edition, edited by James Savage, 1822 ; History of Somerset, by John Collinson,
1791, vol. iii. pp. 225-240 ; General Account of West Somerset, by Edward
Jeboult, 1873 Part II. The Valley of the Tone, Part III. Taunton ; On the
Origin of Gilds, with a Notice of the Ancient Gildha.ll of Taunton, by J. H.
Pring, 1883 ; "The Customs of the Manor of Taunton Dcane," by W. A. Jones,
in Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, vol. xviii. pp. 76-99 ;
House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840, p. 140.
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS, 41
the Lord's Court at the head of the Hierarchy, which continued
to be held down to Victorian times, exercising jurisdiction over
no fewer than five Hundreds and many tithings and parishes.
Besides this Court, there existed minor Courts for the Liberty
(by which we understand the precinct of the Castle), and for
the " Hundred of Taunton Market " ; which (like Berkeley and
Wotton) had been granted exceptional autonomy, under the
name of a Borough. 1 The " ancient customs of the Manor,"
formally presented and recorded in 1647 and again in 1817,
enable us to gain some vision of this interesting Hierarchy.
The highest Court seems to have rejoiced in a number of
different names or nicknames, according to the date at which
or the purpose for which it was held. In 1647 it sat as a
Court of Survey. Twice a year it was the Court Leet or
Lawday. On the occasion on which, once a year, the Manorial
officers were chosen it was the " Choice Court." The sitting
" next after Michaelmas Lawday " was the " Fulfilling Court,"
when two tenants in each Hundred were sworn to view the
list of amercements for the past year, and to " affeer " them ;
it may be that there was a second " Fulfilling Court " in the
spring. There was the " Ossinge Court," or " Penn Court,"
of which the meaning is unknown to us. Finally there was
the " Three Weeks' Court," called also the Court Baron, held
every three weeks, primarily as a petty debt court, 2 though it
dealt also with defaults. This score or more of Courts
incidentally referred to as " Tenants' Courts " 3 all held in the
Great Hall of the Castle of Taunton, before the Steward or,
in the case of the Three Weeks' Court, by the Clerk of the
Castle had to be attended by all the customary tenants of
the Manor, but these, if not specially summoned as jurymen,
could escape on payment of small fines a penny each time,
or eightpence for the year, bought exemption from the Court
Baron or Three Weeks' Court, and threepence each time did
the same for the others. At the Leet or Lawday, twice a year,
1 " Outfaring Courts" are also mentioned (The Customs of the Manor of
Taunton and Taunton Deanc, by Richard Locke, 1785), which were perhaps
those held for the " Outfaring " part of the Vale, sixteen parishes which had been
alienated from the Manor by William I. (History of Taunton, by Joshua
Toulmin, 1822, p. 45).
2 House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and of Courts of
Request, 1840.
3 Customs of the Manor of Taunton and Taunton Deane, by R. Locke, 1785.
42 THE COURT IN RUINS
there was summoned a " Grand Jury," which seems not only
to have presented nuisances and Manorial offences, but also to
have heard and decided disputes relating to copyhold tenements.
At one of the two Leets or Lawdays the Grand Jury presented
suitable persons to serve as High Constable for the Hundred
of Taunton Deane, and as Tithingmen for one or two of the
tithings. It is not apparent how the numerous Petty Constables
or Tithingmen for the other tithings were appointed, though it
is stated that these all had to attend the Court Baron or Three
Weeks' Court to present defaults ; and also to attend the two
Leets or Lawdays. That this attendance had fallen into
desuetude, may be inferred from the fact that it was recorded
in 1647 that the Tithingmen of twenty-seven tithings had
to pay a shilling each yearly to be excused from bringing in
their bushel measures to be tried by the standard on the two
Lawdays. 1 At the Choice Court, the tenants had to make a
choice of persons to be appointed as " Eeceiver to receive the
Steward at the two Leets or Lawday Courts ; and one several
Eeeve for every Hundred to gather the Lord's rents ; and
Beadles to serve the Lord's Courts, and to gather the amerce-
ments and customary works, and to make account thereof to
the Eeeve as hath been accustomed within every Hundred." 2
The office of Eeeve had to be served in turn by the " bond-
land" tenants those having houses on their holdings
according to a rotation known as "the Eecognition of the
Manor." There were "certain plots of ground in each
Hundred, the profits of which are appointed to the Eeeves
for the time being." 3 Two tenants had also to be appointed
annually as Viewers, and sworn to present any customary
tenant neglecting to keep his house in repair. 4
Among the minor Courts of the Hierarchy, we know
1 Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer, 1821, Appendix,
p. 9.
2 Ibid. By 1821 the Bailiff had, it seems (in all the Hundreds except one),
superseded the Reeve in the collection of the Lord's rents and dues. It is to be
noted that, between 1781 and 1801, these included six heriots, varying from
42 to 84 each (ibid. pp. 92-93).
3 Ibid. p. 114.
4 Ibid. p. 107. Other officers of the Manor in 1647 were the Constable of
Taunton Castle, the Bailiff of the Castle, the Clerk of the Castle, and the
Porter, or Keeper of the Gate of the Castle all, we assume, appointed by the
Lord or his Steward ; the Woodward and the Overseers or Surveyors of the
Water-works, Wears, and Banks, of whom we know nothing (ibid. Appendix).
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 43
nothing of the two Lawdays per annum and the " Three
Weeks' Courts," which the Clerk of the Castle is said to have
held for the Liberty of the Precinct of the Castle, nor of the
" Outfitting Courts," of which we have a bare mention. But
in the Borough of Taunton the Clerk of the Castle held not
only a " Borough Court " every fortnight, presumably for petty
debt business, but also two " Lawday Courts " annually, at
which were chosen, right down to Victorian times, the two
Portreeves, who collected the Lord's quit-rents in the Borough
and enjoyed the privilege of letting for their own profit the
standings in the market-place; 1 two Bailiffs, who seem to
have been 2 the chief executive officers of what had become a
flourishing market centre ; together with two Constables, six
Tithingmen, and one or more Ale-tasters. The two Constables
did much of the administrative work of the town under the
Bailiffs : billeting soldiers, managing the almshouses, and dis-
tributing various dole charities. In return they enjoyed the
patronage, presided at an annual " Constables' Feast," kept the
profits of the market scales, and succeeded to the more
lucrative office of Portreeve. 8 But the real rulers were the
Bailiffs, who had, by the end of the eighteenth century, made
themselves virtually permanent, and, after 1792, were recognised
by Parliament as the returning officers for the Borough. " The
Jury year after year empanelled are," we are told in 1821,
" called the Packed Jury. . . . One of the Bailiffs . . . did
publicly assert that the Bailiffs going out of office always took
care to assemble such persons as jurors as would return the
nominees of themselves. ... It is notorious that some years
ago a Jury was summoned, and it being rumoured that they
meant to alter the succession of Bailiffs, they were immedi-
ately dismissed, and another Jury empanelled. . . . For a
succession of years four individuals only have filled the office
of Bailiffs, two of them taking the same in alternate years." 4
This Court of the Borough of Taunton had in fact attained to
a measure of autonomy, the Jury electing the Bailiffs and the
1 History of Taunton, by Joshua Toulmin, 1821, p. 277.
2 Before 1627 and after 1792 the interval having been filled by a Chartered
Municipal Corporation.
3 General Account of West Somerset, by Edward Jeboult, 1873, Part III.,
Taunton, pp. 24-26.
* Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer, 1821. p. 130.
44 THE COURT IN RUINS
Bailiff selecting the Jury, without the interference of the Lord's
Steward. It had, moreover, developed a certain amount of
administrative structure. As such it falls into our class of
Manorial Boroughs, to be dealt with in a subsequent chapter.
We mention it here merely to complete our survey of the
Hierarchy of Courts.
Hierarchies of Courts were, of course, not confined to the
South and West of England. In Northumberland, for
instance, there continued to be held, down to the middle of
the nineteenth century, a whole array of Courts on the wide
domains of the Duke of Northumberland. 1
1 We were unable to examine the MS. records of these Courts, but there
seem to have been () Great Courts of the Baronies of Alnwick, Tindale, and
perhaps Prudhoe ; (6) Halmote Courts or Courts Baron for particular Manors,
of which fifteen were still being held in 1839, for petty debt cases, aud possibly
other business ; and (c) a Court for the Manor of the Borough of Alnwick,
nominally every three weeks, but actually only half-yearly, at which Burgesses
or Freemen were admitted, nuisances presented, Bylaws made, offenders amerced,
copyhold properties transferred, and the Borough officers formally appointed and
sworn. With the struggle of this Borough Court for autonomy we shall deal
later, when we describe the Manorial Borough of Alnwick. It would be interest-
ing to discover what exactly were the functions and the relations of the highest
members of these Northumberland Hierarchies. For instance, we hear of a
"Knight's Court," or "curia militaris," held at Alnwick Castle, nominally
attended by the great freehold tenants, and exercising jurisdiction over the
entire barony of Alnwick. Such Courts, though apparently disused between
1741 and 1791, were being held in the latter part of the seventeenth and the
beginning of the eighteenth centuries ; dealing, we infer, primarily with
successions and admissions, disputes between free tenants of different Manors,
encroachments of one Manor on another, and defaults not duly presented in
the inferior Courts. At the Knight's Coiirt held in 1707, for instance, "the
tenants of Chillingham, Fawdon, and Swinhoe were amerced 20d. each township,
who owe service to His Grace for watching the Fair according to ancient custom,"
for their default in not sending in the men whom they had to furnish to guard
the Borough of Alnwick at the great Alnwick Fair. Latterly, at any rate, the
"Knight's Court" appointed Constables for various Manors, for which Courts
were not held, and dealt with many minor offences and defaults throughout a
wide district. The Court of the Barony of Tindale, on the other hand, held at
Wark, seems to have survived down to 1846 as a petty debt Court, meeting three
times a year, and resorted to only in cases in which the defendants did not
reside within the jurisdiction of any subordinate Courts (MS. Records of the
Corporation of Alnwick, 1594-1835; Feudal and Military Antiquities of
Northumberland and the Scottish Borders, by Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, 1858 (being
vol. ii. of "Memoirs of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain, etc.," for
1852) ; History of Alnwick, by George Tate, 1869 ; History of Northumberland,
vol. i., by E. Batcson ; Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Law,
1833, pp. 170-171 ; House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and
of Courts of Request, 1840).
We do not even know whether the Alnwick "Knight's Court " is to be
identified with the Capital Court of the Barony, stated in 1483 to be held every
twenty days, harvest excepted. The term "Knight's Court " (curia militaris)
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 45
In the "Liberty of the Hundred of Macclesfield," in
Cheshire, where the Earl of Derby held sway, we find an
intricate series of jurisdictions within jurisdictions. There
was the Court for the Hundred of Macclesfield, held annually
as the " Court of Great Leet " and monthly as a Court Baron
or " Court of Trials," exercising authority over the whole of
the Liberty of the Hundred. The records of its annual Leet
sessions show it appointing Constables for those townships
which had no Courts of their own, and receiving presentments
from these Constables as well as from its own " Grand Jury,"
relating to offences throughout the Hundred outside the
Forest and the Borough of Macclesfield selling ale without
licence, various public-house disorders, breaking the Assize of
Bread, failure to repair pavement, " keeping two mongrel curs
unmuzzled," breaking the peace and making an affray, en-
croachments on the waste, " keeping a gun," and " keeping
a brace of greyhounds and killing a hare in Birtles ; is a
great killer and destroyer of hares," adds the Constable.
At its nominally monthly sessions, or " Court of Trials "
which gradually came to be only two or three times a
year the same Steward presided with the same Officers, but
an entirely different Jury was empanelled, the " Jury for
Trials," by which pleas of debt and trespass to an unlimited
amount were dealt with. Meanwhile the Forest of Maccles-
field, comprising part of the Hundred nine of the townships
being, in fact, partly in the Forest and partly outside it had
its own Courts. We do not know whether a Swainmote was
held later than that of 1616, of which we have seen the
records, but throughout the eighteenth century and down to
is unusual, but not unknown elsewhere. In the Honour of Forncett in Norfolk,
comprising several Manors having their own Courts, there was held, in the
fifteenth century, an Honour Court or "Knight's Court" (The Economic
Development of a Norfolk Manor, 1086-1565, by F. G. Davenport, 1906,
Appendix I.). In the Isle of Wight, right down to the middle of the nineteenth
century, there continued to be held the " Knighton Court or Knight's Court,"
by the Steward of the Governor of the Island, in the Town Hall of Newport,
every three weeks. Its functions became restricted to petty debt suits, in
which it exercised jurisdiction over the whole island except the Borough of
Newport. After the end of the eighteenth century even this function became
disused, and the Court continued in form only (House of Commons Return
of Courts of Request, 1840, pp. 46-47). The Archbishop of York held a
"curia militaris " for the Liberty of Ripon from, at any rate, the fourteenth
right down to the nineteenth oentury, In 1840 it was a Court for civil actions,
unlimited in amount (ibid. pp. 174-175).
46 THE COURT IN RUINS
the middle of the nineteenth we find a "Halmote Court,"
called subsequently " Court of Kecord for the Manor and
Forest of Macclesfield," held by the same Steward as the
Hundred Court, and eventually on the same day as the latter.
At the six-monthly meetings of this Court for the Manor and
Forest it acted also as a Court Leet, appointing Constables
for the several townships in the Forest. At the other sittings
of the Court conveyances of copyholds were made and an
extensive business was done in the trial of civil actions,
without limit of amount. Finally, there were also held, at
least in the sixteenth century, two separate Courts for the
Borough of Macclesfield, both using the Town Hall one the
" Portmote," or " Great Leet of the Borough," by Lord Derby's
Deputy Steward, which seems to have dealt with the usual
nuisances and affrays, false weights and measures, the regula-
tion of the common, and the trial of civil actions ; and the
other "the Mayor's Court," held by the Mayor of the Borough,
apparently for the trial of civil actions in which both parties
were Burgesses. How exactly these several Courts had
come into existence, and what was the precise demarcation
among them all, we have been unable to ascertain. What is
interesting is that all the resiants of the Hundred, including
those in the Manor of the Forest and those in the Borough,
owed suit and service to the Hundred Court; while all
those in the Borough, including the Mayor and Corporation,
owed suit and service also to Lord Derby's Portmote. A
dispute between the Earl of Derby and the Borough in 1569,
as to the relations of the two competing Borough Courts, led
to an award by two judges attempting to define their several
spheres, and giving separate keys of the Town Hall to the
Mayor and the Steward respectively. We gather that Lord
Derby's "Portmote," or "Town Leet," was discontinued
sometime in the seventeenth century, leaving the Mayor's
Court in possession of the field. This continued, as the
"Borough Court," to try personal actions without limit of
amount. Meanwhile the ordinary business of a Court Leet,
formerly done by Lord Derby's Portmote, was apparently
silently absorbed by the Mayor, ex-Mayor, and two Aldermen,
sitting as Justices for the Borough. A Charter of Charles II.
had made them Justices, and given power to hold general
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 47
Sessions of the Peace, but not to try felonies. This amounted
to little, if any, more jurisdiction than had been possessed by
the Portmote; and what we have, in fact, is a Court Leet
passing insensibly into what was called a Court of Quarter
Sessions. Thus in 1761-1762 we see the Borough Justices
in what they called Quarter Sessions appointing the Burley-
men, the Fish and Flesh Wardens, the Moss Lookers of
Densmoss (a part of the Borough Common), the Searchers
and Sealers of Leather, a Scavenger, a Pig-catcher, a Beadle,
and the two Common Lookers ; and dealing indiscriminately
with assaults and affrays, trespasses on the Common, wrongful
enclosures of the waste of the Borough, false weights and
measures, and exposing unwholesome meat for sale. 1
How far this hierarchical organisation of the Lord's Court
still existed in 1689, and how quickly the surviving remnants
disintegrated, we have been unable to ascertain. From the
scanty records that we have been able to consult, we infer
that it continued over large parts of England during the
eighteenth century, but everywhere becoming more formal
than real, and everywhere falling rapidly into decay. 2
1 MS. Records, Macclesfield Hundred Court, 1688-1835 ; MS. Court Books
of ditto, 1698-1808 ; MS. Records, Court Leet and Halmote Court of Maccles-
field Manor and Forest, 1684-1835 ; MS. Award of 1569 ; MS. Records,
Macclesfield Portmote, 1591 ; MS. Records, Macclesfield Borough Court, 1761 ;
MS. Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1761-1762 (all in Lord Derby's Macclesfield Estate
Office) ; House of Commons Returns of Petty Debt Courts, Hundred Courts, and
Courts of Request, 1828, 1839, and 1840 ; Fifth Report of Royal Commission
on Courts of Law, 1833, p. 35a ; 'Report on Certain Boroughs, by J. T. Hogg,
1838, pp. 51-74 ; History of Macclesfield, by John Corry, 1817 ; Maclesfelde in
ye Olden Time, by Isaac Finney, 1873 ; Contributions towards a History of
. . . Prestbury, by F. Renaud (Chetham Society, 1876) ; Host Cheshire, by J. P.
Earwaker, 1880, vol. ii. pp. 459-525 ; History of the County Palatine of Chester,
by Geo. Ormerod, 2nd edition, 1882, vol. iii. pp. 739-757.
2 We catch glimpses of a similar Hierarchy of Courts in the great episcopal
domains in various dioceses. The Hundred Court of Farnham, in Surrey, for
instance, still held, but shrunken to the mere copyhold business of Farnham
itself, apparently once had jurisdiction over a wide stretch of the Bishop of
Winchester's domains (see Collections of Records and Documents relating to the
Hundred and Manor of Crondal, by F. J. Baigent, Hampshire Record Society,
1891 ; The Manor of Manydown, Hampshire, by G. W. Kitchin, 1895 ; Victoria
County History of Hampshire, vol. ii. 1906, pp. 579-586), including the Manorial
Boroughs of Farnham and Alresford, the latter to be subsequently described. As
late as 1718 a " Court of the Bishopric " was held, at which representatives of a
score of Manors attended (MS. Manor Rolls, Farnham, 1718). We do not know in
what connection stood the " Cheyney Court," which we find held throughout the
eighteenth and for the first third of the nineteenth century ; latterly, at least,
at Winchester, within the cathedral precincts, and exercising jurisdiction
throughout the Bishop's temporalities, extending to over two hundred towns and
48 THE COURT IN RUINS
We suggest that it may possibly be that in the former exist-
ence of a Hierarchy of Courts we have the explanation of some
of the quaint instances in which the representation of a small
hamlet has survived in a comic form. In Dorsetshire, for
example, we read that " the Tithingman of Combe Keynes is
obliged to do suit at Winfrith Court ; and after repeating the
villages. In 1833 its business was confined to hearing petty debt cases (Fifth
Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833, p. 88a).
Similarly, in the diocese of St. Albans, the Manor Rolls of Winslow (Bucking-
hamshire) in the time of Edward III. show that " in case of a dispute a Court
was held under the great ash tree at St. Albans, and the decision of this
superior Manorial Court of headquarters settled the question " (The English
Village Community, by F. Seebohm, 1883, p. 31). So the Abbot of Gloucester
in the thirteenth century held a ' ' Libera Curia " for his great freehold tenants,
whilst each separate Manor had its own Halmote (Select Pleas in Manorial
Courts, by F. W. Maitland, 1889, p. xix). We may likewise infer a Hierarchy
of Courts in the great Honour of Clitheroe, of which " the customs of the copy-
holds " were ' ' ascertained by the Jury of Survey within the forest of Pendle in
the Manor of Igtenhill, 1666." Throughout the wide extent of the Honour
there were " Hamlet Courts" twice a year, which we may interpret as Halmote
Courts. There was also a Court of the Honour, attended by all th'e tenants. The
Homage or Jury presented a Greave or Bailiff. There was also a Deputy Greave,
elected in open Court by a majority of the tenants. All "real" plaints were
to be tried in this Court, by a Jury of twenty-four tenants (The Law of Copy-
holds, by 0. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition, 1893, Appendix VIII.
p. 511). There was, moreover, within the Honour at least one Manorial Borough,
that of Clitheroe, where a ' ' Court of Record " sat weekly under a Recorder
(House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840, pp. 68-69), and inde-
pendent administrative structure had been developed, to which we subsequently
refer (pp. 156, 205). Another instance of a Hierarchy of Courts, with subordin-
ate Manors and Boroughs of various degrees of independence, is presented by a
Welsh Lordship typical, we suspect, of other Welsh jurisdictions. The Manor
paramount of Cantref Moelynaidd comprehends four Hundreds of Radnorshire
and twelve mesne Manors. The Boroughs of Knighton, Cnwelas, New Radnor,
and Rhayader, together with the obsolete Boroughs of Pain's Castle and
Presteign, are also included in it. The Manor paramount continued, through-
out the eighteenth century, and indeed through most of the nineteenth, to exercise
jurisdiction over them all, except the Borough of New Radnor. The Steward
held a Court Baron for the whole lordship every three weeks, the business of
which had become confined to petty debt cases, for which a Jury of six men
was summoned when required. Courts Leet were also held within the mesno
Manors, and also (at least in the Bailiwick of Gladestry and Colfa) a Court
Baron monthly for small debts. Within the Boroughs, the Steward of the
Lordship also held Courts Leet, at which Juries of Burgesses nominated new
Burgesses, who were admitted and sworn and thereby became entitled to the
Parliamentary franchise for these Boroughs. The two ancient Boroughs of
Pain's Castle and Presteign either lost, or had never possessed, such Courts, and
the House of Commons disallowed in 1690 the claims of their Burgesses to vote.
The Borough of New Radnor (p. 236), on the other hand, had become largely in-
dependent of the Hierarchy, getting a Royal Charter establishing a close Cor-
poration, and holding its own Courts (History of Radnorshire, by Rev. J. Williams,
in Archceologia Cambrensis, 3rd ser. vols. iii. p. 26, andiv. p. 1, 1857-58 ; First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. i. pp. 357-362),
THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS 49
following incoherent lines, pays threepence and goes out with-
out saying another word :
" With my white rod,
And I am a fourth post,
That threepence makes three,
God bless the King, and the Lord of the Franchise,
Our Weights and Measures are lawful and true,
Good-morrow, Mr. Steward, I have no more to say to you.
" On default of any of these particulars the Court Leet
of Combe is forfeited." * It does not appear to be an
unwarranted inference that the Tithing of Combe Keynes,
though possibly having a minor Court of its own, had not
been granted the privilege of standardising its own weights
and measures, and had to do suit at the superior Court at
Winfrith by four men, of whom the Tithingman was the leader,
and eventually the proxy for the others, paying a penny each
for their absence. The attendance of the Tithingmen of the
whole Hundred was (as we have seen at Taunton) usual at
the Hundred Court. " If there be more than one Tithingman,
as always is in the Hundred Court," says a widely circulated
manual, "swear them all in like manner, and receive from
them the Common Fine or King's Silver. Then take from
them their resiant rolls or lists of their tithings ; call them
over and mark them that answer thus, ' appears.' " 2 The
attendance even of the Tithingman might be dispensed with, his
staff or rod of office being sent to represent him. Thus in
the Hundred of Twyford, in Kent, " there was," we read, " till
of late years a singular though a very ancient custom kept up
of electing a Deputy to the Dumb Borsholder of Chart, as it
1 History and Antiquities of Dorset, by John Hutchins, 1774, vol. i. p. 127 ;
Ancient Customs of Taunton Deane, by H. B. Shillibeer, 1821. Can "post" bo
derived from " prepositus, " the word used for Reeve ?
2 TJie Complete Courtkeeper, or Land Steward's Assistant, by Giles Jacob, 1st
edition, 1713 ; 8th, 1819, p. 30. We may catch a glimpse in 1774 of such
attendance of the Tithingman at the Court of the Hundred at Whitchurch in
Dorsetshire, comprising nineteen tithings. At the Court of this Hundred the
residents in all the tithings were supposed to attend, and (as in the Hundred
of Berkeley) to serve on its Juries. Two Constables were regularly appointed
for the Hundred. But subordinate Courts were also held in some, at any
rate, of the Manors within the Hundred, at which Petty Constables for these
Manors (or apparently for the tithings) were appointed. Only in twelve out of
the nineteen tithings did the Hundred Court appoint the Petty Constable (R.
v. Genge, in Reports of Cases, etc., by Henry Cowper, 1783, pp. 13-17).
VOL, II. PT. I E
5 o THE COURT IN RUINS
was called, claiming liberty over fifteen houses in the precinct
of Pizeinwell, every householder of which was formerly
obliged to pay the keeper of this Borsholder one penny yearly.
This Dumb Borsholder was always first called at the Court
Leet holden for the Hundred of Twyford, when its keeper,
who was yearly appointed by that Court, held it up to his
call, with a neckcloth or handkerchief put through the iron
ring fixed at the top, and answered for it. This Borsholder
of Chart, and the Court Leet, has been discontinued about
fifty years, and the Borsholder who is put in by the Quarter
Sessions for Wateringbury claims over the whole parish. This
Dumb Borsholder is made of wood, about three feet and half an
inch long, with an iron ring at the top, and four more by the
sides near the bottom, where it has a square iron spike fixed,
four inches and a half long, to fix it in the ground, or on
occasion to break open doors, etc., which used to be done " it
is said down to 1748 " without a Warrant of any Justice on
suspicion of goods having been unlawfully come by and con-
cealed in any of these fifteen houses." l
The Hierarchy of Courts that we find so well preserved in
the Vale of Berkeley and at Taunton Deane, and less perfectly
elsewhere, throws, we think, some light on the nature and
origin of the various other Courts, up and down the country,
that we find existing under the name of Hundred Courts,
without any apparent connection with separate Courts of
minor jurisdiction. When, in the fourteenth century, the
Hundred Courts were merged in the County Courts of the
Sheriffs if that is what happened those Hundred Courts
which had already passed, as valuable Franchises, into
private hands were not affected. 2 Not infrequently, therefore,
these continued to be held, and it may be that they went on
without intermission into the eighteenth century ; sometimes
1 History and Survey of Kent, by Edward Hasted, 1797, vol. v. p. 107 ;
Observations on Popular Antiquities, by John Brand, vol. i. p. 132 of 1841
edition; Kent's Capital, 1906. So, too, we read that, in Essex, "Lambourn
Manor was held by service of the Ward Staff" (i.e. the Constable's or Watch-
man's staff), which was carried into Court with quaint ceremonies (Ancient
Manorial Customs in the County of Essex, by R. S. Charnock, 1870, pp. 17-22).
2 Lex Maneriorum, by W. Nelson, 1728, p. 190.
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 51
held, as of old, like that of Fawsley, " beneath the spreading
branches of an enormous beech tree." l We are inclined to
doubt, however, whether the few specimens of which we have
particulars are all of the same species. In some cases the
surviving Hundred Court appears simply to have outlived
the Hierarchy, whilst often itself combining with the Court of
its principal Manor. In other cases we may suspect that the
term Hundred Court never has denoted the superior member
of any Hierarchy of Courts, and that it represents much the
same jurisdiction as was elsewhere exercised by the ordinary
Manor Courts. In rare instances, again, a so-called Hundred
Court is found among the various Courts held by Municipal
Corporations in and for their Boroughs, with no wider juris-
diction than a Borough Court. 2 As such it will fall to be
described in subsequent chapters.
What appears to be a common feature of the so-called
Hundred Courts between 1689 and 1835 is their extreme
attenuation of function. The majority of those that survived
into the eighteenth century seem to have been little more
than Courts for the trial of petty civil actions for debt and
damages, and, as such, hardly come within the scope of Local
Government as we have defined it. Other Hundred Courts,
whilst retaining traces of the Court Baron side, appear
1 This Hundred Court was thus held in Fawsley Park until the beginning
of the eighteenth century, when it was removed to Everdon (History and
Antiquities of Northamptonshire, by George Baker, 1822,- vol. i. p. 238;
Victoria Couiity History of Northamptonshire, vol. i. 1902, p. 298).
2 Such was the Colchester "Hundred and Foreign Court." Such, too,
was the " Hundred Court " of Kid welly, in Carmarthenshire ; and such were those
in the Cinque Ports (p. 378).
Less clear is the case of the Hundred Court of Gloucester, which continued,
as its Minutes show, to be nominally held by adjournment weekly before the
Mayor and the two Sheriffs of the City. What it did is not apparent, as the
Minutes contain, after 1680, little more than a perpetual repetition of the
names of the suitors, who were the owners of certain estates in Gloucestershire
and Herefordshire, the jurisdiction over which had, somehow or another, come
to belong to the Corporation of Gloucester. It swore in Constables (infra, p. 341).
During the whole period there was held also the Court Leet of the City of
Gloucester half-yearly, before the Steward of the two Sheriffs, the MS. Minutes
of which, between 1784 and 1819, show it to be making presentments of the
usual kind. Whether the "Hundred Court" of Gloucester was merely held
by the Corporation by right of its ownership of a Hundred, just as the Corpora-
tion of the City of London held the Bailiwick of Southwark ; or whether, as
Mr. Adolphus Ballard has suggested, it was a Court of the owners of those
lands within the County which had to maintain the city wall, we must leave
for antiquarian research.
52 THE COURT IN RUINS
chiefly as emasculated Courts Leet, appointing Constables and
occasionally presenting nuisances. Our general impression
is that these isolated Hundred Courts had once been un-
differentiated Courts, dealing with all sorts of business
indifferently, at one and the same Court, by one set of
officers ; 1 and that the appearance of specialisation has
resulted from the unevenness of the decay into which their
various functions were falling. Pending further study of
the records of the various Hundred Courts from the fourteenth
to the nineteenth century, we can do no more than set forth
such particulars as we have been able to glean of those which
existed after 1689.
A remarkable case of survival of an ancient Hundred
Court, detached from the Manor Courts within the Hundred,
is that of Salford, 2 in Lancashire, where we find the Steward
of the Earl of Sefton, throughout the eighteenth, and down
even to the middle of the nineteenth century, continuing to
hold " the Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court of
Eecord of our Sovereign Lord the King for his Hundred or
Wapentake of Salford." This Court evidently represented
an ancient tribunal of which the jurisdiction extended nomin-
ally to the whole of the modern Hundred of Salford perhaps
1 Thus we are told that the "Hundred Court of Perveth" in Cardiganshire
seems to have been held as a " Court Leet and Law Day " twice a year, and as
a ' ' Court Baron " fortnightly ; it maintained the stocks and regulated the
common, dealt with presentments and heard civil actions, and appointed both
Constable and Reeve (prepositus or "major") see Treatise on Copyholds by
C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, p. 503.
2 The archives of Salford, long neglected, scattered, and destroyed, are only
now being collected and studied. Some records of the Lord's Court from 1597
to 1669 apparently the active Court of the Seignorial Borough, comparable
with that of Berkeley or Wotton have lately been published (The Portmote,
or Court Leet, Records of tJie Borough or Town and Royal Manor of Salford,
by J. G. de T. Mandley ; Chetham Society, vols. xlvi. and xlvii., 1902). Stray
records of Salford Courts exist, both of earlier arid of later date, some being
preserved among the archives of the modern Salford Hundred Court of Record
in Manchester, while those from 1828 to 1867 are in a thick, leather-bound
volume now in the Salford Public Library. See also the particulars in House
of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840 ; and Fifth Report of Royal
Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833 ; and the occasional reports in
the newspapers, especially Manchester Guardian, 4th May 1833, 8th October
1836, 18th October 1837 ; Manchester Chronicle, 4th May 1833 ; Manchester
Times, 19th December 1835 ; and, on the whole subject, Med'Ueval Manchester
and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 9. The Manchester
Municipal Code, vol. v., 1899, gives the Acts and Orders in Council, 1868-1893,
with a short memorandum on the history of the Court (pp. 267-268).
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 53
to the whole of the ancient " Salfordshire," still described as
" the King's Manor of the Hundred of Salford," of which the
Earl of Sefton was not styled Lord but Steward, and which
included some fifty parishes or townships, among them being
Oldham, Bolton, Bury, arid Manchester itself. 1 Judging from
such fragmentary records as have survived, the Court of the
Hundred of Salford was in fact once as all-embracing as the
Court of the Hundred of Berkeley, having under it many
other Courts ; perhaps even the Court of the Barony of
Manchester itself, with its own subordinate Halimotes or
Courts Baron of the separate Manors, which we may assume
to have been un differentiated Courts, or (in the case of Salford
and Manchester at any rate), like Berkeley or Wotton, the
Leets or Moots of favoured townships which seignorial Charters
had made into so-called Boroughs. We shall describe
presently the vigorous life of the Manchester Court Leet.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there had been
another such Borough Court held at Salford itself, called the
Portmote, presumably under the charter of the Earl of
Chester and Lincoln of 1231. At some period between
1669 and 1828 apparently between 1738 and 1800
it seems to have coalesced with or been merged in the
Hundred Court, which presumably had continued to exercise
a wider jurisdiction. 2 When we are again enabled to take
1 Eoger the Poitevin retained the township of Salford in demesne when he
enfeoffed under-tenants for the rest of his estate, a separation which had
lasting consequences. "A stroke of a Norman baron's pen divorced Manchester
and Salford in all but their devotions, and what he sundered no one has been
able to bring together again, though they have long since ceased to be separated
by green fields sloping down to a trout stream. A stranger who found himself
in Deansgate, and wanted to know why two types of tram-car were running in
what seemed to him a single city, would be mightily astonished if we told him
that this was the doing of a foreign Count of the eleventh century. But so
it is. It may be doubted whether it occurred to any citizen of Manchester
resident in Broughton, who, during the recent deadlock between the two
tramway committees, was turned out of the car at the city boundary, and had
to walk several hundred yards in the rain to catch a Salford car, to curse the
memory of Count Roger the Poitevin. He might have done this with some
justice " (Hediceval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James
Tait, 1904, p. 10).
2 We imagine that in many other cases the Court of the Hundred had
become combined with that of its principal Manor. Thus, in the Hundred of
Crewkerne in Somerset, which constituted a single "Lordship," extending over
seven tithings, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries, there was
only one Court held, called the Hundred Court and Court Baron. At the
principal sessions of this Court each year the Lord nominated not only the
54 THE COURT IN RUINS
up the story in 1828, it is not the Portmote of the Borough
but the " Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court of
Record ... for the Hundred or Wapentake of Salford "
that is being held in Salford. By this time the Court, so
far as the area outside Salford Borough was concerned, had
ceased to stand in any relation whatever to such Manor
Courts as were still held within its ancient jurisdiction. In
1833, for instance, the Deputy Steward explained probably
on the authority of Joseph Eitson's learned book that " the
business of this Court solely applied to townships which had
not the benefit of Courts Leet of their own. This being
the Hundred Court Leet, it was their duty, therefore, to elect
Constables in such cases . . . and in the event of proper
persons not being returned by the townships to the Court,
or where two lists were presented, they must elect such
persons as would faithfully discharge the duties of the office." ]
We accordingly find the Salford Hundred Court in 1828
attended every half-year by the Constables, Deputy Constables,
Bailiff of the Hundred, but also the Portreeve of the little town of Crewkerue,
who collected the profits of its fair and market. The suitors of the Court
elected the Reeve, who was responsible for collecting the quit-rents and fines
due from the tenants. The other sessions held during the year were known as
the Three Weeks' Courts, and at these the Tithingmen of the several districts
were bound to attend, each bringing with them four of their neighbours, who
were called "four posts," and who had to make presentments (The Book of
the Art, by G. P. R. Pulman, 4th edition, 1875, pp. 247-250 ; quoting an
MS. Survey of the Manor in 1599). Possibly a similar case is that of the
' ' Manor, Hundred, and Borough " of Bradford in Wiltshire, which we see
holding its "Court Leet, View of Frankpledge, and Court Baron" in 1819, and
appointing a Constable and an Assistant Constable for the Hundred, together
with a factotum, who combined in himself "the five offices of Bailiff of the
Hundred, Assistant Constable of the Hundred, Haywarden, Tithingnian of
the Old Town and Tithingnian of the New Town of Bradford." It is reported
to the Home Office that the new and zealous Constable has presented this
pluralist for making false presentments to the Quarter Sessions, swearing that
the roads were in good repair when they were not (Home Office Domestic State
Papers in Public Record Office, No. 10, 13th April and 1st May 1819, and
January 1820).
1 Report of Proceedings of Salford Court Leet, Manchester Chronicle, 4th
May 1833. This view was upheld by the Court of King's Bench in 1822,
as against the inhabitants of the Township of Failsworth, who claimed to meet
annually to elect their own Constable, but failed definitely to allege that they
did this by prescription. The action of the Salford Court in appointing a
Constable for this Township was confirmed (R. v. Lane, in Reports of Cases, etc.,
by E. V. Barnewall and E. H. Alderson, 1823, vol. v. pp. 488-489). Ritson
had said that the Leet of a Hundred had jurisdictioii only over such parts of
the Hundred as were not within the jurisdiction of the Court Leet of any
Manor (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 5).
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 55
and Assistant Constables of forty out of the fifty townships
included within the Hundred; and enabling such nuisances
in these townships as noxious smells and smoke from factories,
obstructions of the highway, leaving roads unfenced in
dangerous places, foul ditches, exposing unwholesome food
for sale, and using false weights or measures to be presented
and fined. 1 The Court was always held at Salford. We
gather that the jurymen were chosen from residents of the
so-called " Borough " of Salford, not, as at Berkeley, from the
various Manors of the Hundred ; the so-called Burgesses of
Salford Borough were required to attend under penalty of
sixpence, and inhabitants of the Borough not being Burgesses,
under penalty of threepence ; new Burgesses had to be sworn
in ; and it is evident that the principal business of the Court
related to that Borough, for which, besides the officers of
the Hundred, it appointed annually a Boroughreeve, two
Constables, a Dog -muzzier, an Ale -taster, By law -men and
Inspectors of Flesh and Fish. The Hundred Court seems,
in fact, to Lave been the only active "police and sanitary
authority " which the township of Salford enjoyed, until the
rise, early in the nineteenth century, of a democratic Open
Vestry, and the advent, in 1829, of a statutory body of Police
or Street Commissioners ; and the fact that this Court
appointed the Boroughreeve, gave it complete authority in
what had already become a crowded and insanitary factory
town.
Meanwhile there was being continuously held at Salford
another series of Courts, from three weeks to three weeks, also
1 See, for instance, MS. Minutes, Salford Hundred Court Leet, 9th April
1828. We add two examples as typical: "The jurors of our Lord the King
upon their oaths present that at Aucoats Bridge within Ardwick in the said
Hundred of Salford ... is a manufactory for making sal ammoniac next to
the King's common highway there leading from Manchester to Ashton . . .
which emits great quantities of noisome and noxious fumes and vapours to the
great nuisance of all the King's subjects passing and travelling there, by the
default of Ebenezer Breillatt. . . . Therefore he is in mercy. . . . And they
amerce him in five shillings, and he is commanded to abate the same within
two months under the pain of one hundred pounds" (ibid. 9th April 1828).
In 1833 the Deputy Constable of Pendleton said he had been requested by the
respectable inhabitants of that township to present a number of owners and
occupiers of property abutting "the Black ditch . . . full to overflowing of
refuse of dyehouses . . . causing an intolerable stench . . . the most intoler-
able nuisance in the neighbourhood." The Jury thereupon presented the
offenders (ibid. April 1833).
56 THE COURT IN RUINS
purporting to be those of the Court of the Salford Hundred or
Wapentake. Every third Thursday one or other of the three
Deputy Stewards, whom the Earl of Sefton had appointed for
this special purpose, 1 held his Court for the trial of actions for
debt or damages under forty shillings within the wide limits of
the Hundred. Over a thousand such actions a year were being
dealt with by this Court in 1835, 2 notwithstanding the con-
current existence as petty debt tribunals of the Court Baron of
Manchester and of statutory Courts of Requests in and for
Manchester, Oldham, Bury, and Rochdale. 3
Amid the political agitation of 1829-32, the Radicals began
to chafe against the " self-elect " constitution of the Salford
Hundred Court, by which they meant exclusively the half-yearly
sessions for the appointment of Borough officers. They recalled
the fact that the Earl of Sefton, as a Whig peer, had supported
the Reform Bill ; and some of them urged him to be true to
his faith in representative government, and to cause his Deputy
Steward to leave off packing the Jury with Tories. Lord
Sefton fell in with this view, and from 1835 onward the jury-
1 In 1835, at any rate, and for many years previously, these Deputy Stewards
were the members of one of the leading firms of solicitors at Manchester, and
quite distinct from the Deputy Steward, a barrister, whom the Earl appointed to
hold the half-yearly Courts.
2 House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840 ; Fifth Report of
Royal Commision on Courts of Common Law, 1833, pp. 26a, 53a, 61a, 78<z, 108a,
132a, 16, 106.
3 Somewhat akin to the position of the Salford Hundred Court was apparently
that of Bradford at Wellington in Shropshire. This Court, held by the Duke of
Cleveland under Royal Letters Patent of 1672, had once exercised full jurisdiction
over the whole Hundred. By the nineteenth century, however, it had come to
exercise what we may call Leet jurisdiction, and to appoint Constables only for
those Manors within the Hundred which no longer held Courts of their own. It
continued, however, to sit fortnightly for the preliminary stages of civil actions,
and twice a year for the trial of causes arising anywhere within the Hundred.
At the two general Courts (one of them being utilised for the appointment of
Constables, etc.) it is said that the Constables of the Hundred had to attend
(Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833, pp. 106ff,
167ffl, 168a ; House of Commons Return of Hundred Courts, 1839, p. 5 ; and of
Courts of Request, 1840, pp. 132-133). Here, too, we may mention the Courtof
the Hundred of Whitchurch (Dorset), which did not try civil suits, but appointed
two Constables for the Hundred and Tithingmen for such of the nineteen Tithings
within the Hundred as did not have Courts of their own. When a resident in
one of the Tithings for which a Manor Court was held had been appointed
Constable for the Hundred by the Hundred Court, he appealed to the Court of
King's Bench for exemption, on the plea that the Hundred Court had no right to
appoint a resident "within a private Leet." But he was held liable to serve the
Hundred (R. i>. Genge, 1774, in reports of Cases, etc., by Henry Cowper, 1783,
pp. 13-17>
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 57
men at the half-yearly meetings were taken by lot from a list of
the five hundred highest rated inhabitants. 1 At the same time
it became taken for granted that this Jury should accept, for
the offices of Boroughreeve and Constables, the nominations
made by the open Vestry Meeting. 2 Under these circumstances
there seems to have been no popular objection to the continu-
ance of the formal participation of the Hundred Court in the
Local Government of the Borough, and its half-yearly sessions
accordingly went on being formally held, and its annual appoint-
ments of Boroughreeve and other officers being made, down to
1867. No objection seems ever to have been made to the
three-weekly trial of civil actions, under which form, by virtue
of successive Acts of Parliament, and with only the slightest
change of name, the ancient Court of the Wapentake or Hundred
of Salford survives to this day. 3
On the South Coast of England we find, right down to
1855, at Brighton, in Sussex, the Court of the Hundred of
Whalesbone, or more properly, Wellesbourne. This was de-
scribed as " the Leet or Lawday and View of Frankpledge,"
not for any one Manor but for the whole of the Hundred, the
1 The reformer who secured this change was one J. S. Ormerod, who was pre-
sented with a gold snuff-box by his admirers. His reply contains the following
passages, which we give as specimens of the feeling that prevailed. ' ' When I
first thought of making an effort to prevent the Borough of Salford . . . from
being ruled and governed in its Municipal constitution by men who had nothing
to recommend them but superstition and bigoted Toryism ; when I found also
that these men were chosen by a class of individuals who were self-elected from
men possessing precisely the same politics as themselves ; when I found that
these men were so ignorant as to boast of having been upon that Jury thirty
years, some for more than twenty, others for twenty " he determined to
approach Lord Sefton, who made inquiry and directed his Deputy Steward to
adopt a new plan (Manchester Times, 19th December 1835).
2 See, for instance, Manchester Guardian, 8th October 1836.
3 In 1846 its jurisdiction was preserved and enlarged, so as to enable it to
deal with actions up to 50, by 9 and 10 Victoria, c. 126. In 1868 it was
amalgamated with the Court of Record held by the Manchester Corporation
under its Charter of 1838 and 17 and 18 Victoria, c. 84, and given the new
title of the Salford Hundred Court of Record (31 and 32 Victoria, c. 130).
The Earl of Sefton was thereby continued as High Steward, with a right to
receive one-third of the fees arising from such cases as would have been within
the jurisdiction of the old Salford Court, less a proportion of the expenses, but
in no case to amount to less than two hundred guineas a year (sec. 35). The
Boroughs of Oldham, Boltou, Heywood, and Rochdale successively got them-
selves exempted from the jurisdiction of the Salford Hundred Court, in all
matters in which the modern County Court has cognizance (Orders in Council
of 30th December 1878, 16th August 1886, and 15th March 1893, and the
Oldham Corporation Act 1886, 49 and 50 Victoria, c. 117).
$8 THE COURT IN RUINS
Lord or Steward of the Hundred being the Earl of Aber-
gavenny. The Hundred of Whalesbone comprised the parish
of Brighthelmston (now Brighton) with the " Boroughs " or
hamlets of Preston and Patcham a much smaller area than
the Hundred of Berkeley. Within the Hundred there were,
however, a number of reputed Manors and parcels of Manors,
inextricably confused by partitions and alienations. Bright-
helmston itself, in the days when its importance lay in its
fishing, had had an important Manor Court of its own, of which
the " ancient customs " had been of sufficient consequence to
be investigated by a special Royal Commission of 1580. 1
What Lord's Courts were held in the eighteenth century within
the Hundred, and exactly for what purposes, we have been
unable to ascertain. 2 But the Hundred Court continued
vigorously to exist, though, as we gather, principally, if not
entirely, for the purpose of appointing annually at Easter the
various officers of the Hundred : the High Constable, twelve
Headboroughs or Assistant Constables, 3 an Aleconner, and a
Searcher and Sealer of Leather. It had apparently only one
Jury, summoned by the Deputy Steward. It seems not to
have dealt with actions for debt or damages. Of the history
of this ancient jurisdiction during the eighteenth century we
know nothing. We find it after the Parliamentary election of
1825 coming into sharp conflict with the Vestry, which refused
to pass the High Constable's accounts. The items objected to
related to the swearing in of special constables " during the late
county election," and the payments to private persons for
apprehending suspected criminals and vagrants. 4 These items
appeared, in accordance with the provisions of 18 George III.
c, 19 (1779), in the Overseers' accounts, and as it had never
become quite clear whether the consent of the Vestry was
necessary to their validity, the County Magistrates did not
scruple to pass the Overseers' accounts containing the items
1 History of Brighthelmston, by J. A. Erredge, 1862 ; Compendious History
of Sussex, by M. A. Lower, 1870, vol. i. pp. 77-84 ; Sussex Archaeological
Collections, vol. ii. p. 38. We recur to this in the following chapter (p. 173).
2 There is evidence that Manorial Courts were held for property business ;
see, for instance, the reference to the surrender of certain tenements by the
Churchwardens of Brighthelmston " at a General Court Baron for the Manor of
Allingworth" (MS. Vestry Minutes, Brighton, 3rd February 1806).
3 Brighton Herald, 9th April 1825.
4 Ibid. 17th September 1825 and 29th July 1826.
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 59
objected to. 1 The friction between the Vestry and the Hundred
Court continued ; and in 1828 the Vestry sent an elaborate
memorial to the Earl of Abergavenny, as " the Lord of the Leet
of the Hundred of Whalesbone," protesting against " the great,
notorious, and crying abuse," that the outgoing High Constable
packed the Jury summoned to elect his successor, and " the
choice has consequently not been congenial to the wishes
of the inhabitants." 2 It appears that the same little set
of the Vicar, the County Justices resident in the town, and
other Tory magnates had appeared as jurymen year after year,
the Vicar acting always as Foreman. In answer to this
memorial the Steward addressed to the Vestry a long and able
description of the procedure of the Hundred Court. In future,
he adds, " I shall require the High Constable to return to me
... a list of at least fifty of the most respectable inhabitants
. . . and I shall advise that such list be made known to the
public. . . . From this list I shall select by ballot 2 3 to form a
Jury. ... If any reasonable and fair objection shall be stated
in Court ... to any gentleman so summoned ... I shall not
hesitate to dispense with the attendance of that juryman." 3
The result was that within a short time the Vestry and the
High Constable became on excellent terms, 4 and the Hundred
Court continued to be held for nearly another generation. 5
1 MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Sussex, 20th October 1825. Such a case
had then recently occurred at the Cheshire Quarter Sessions, where the
Constable of Ashton-under-Lyne had laid his accounts before the Vestry, and
had an item disallowed (the expense of prosecuting a Dissenting Minister for
preaching in the streets) ; two Justices had nevertheless allowed the Overseers'
Accounts including this item. One out of the eight Overseers appealed to
Quarter Sessions, which confirmed the allowance. The Court of King's Bench
dismissed an appeal on the ground that it was not promoted by a majority of
the Overseers, without, therefore, deciding that the action of the Justices had
been wrong (R. v. Justices of Lancashire, in Reports of Cases, etc., by E. V.
Bamewall and E. H. Alderson, 1823, vol. v. pp. 755-758).
2 Brighton Herald, 2nd February 1828.
3 MS. Vestry Minutes, Brighton, 25th January and 22nd February 1828.
* Ibid. 20th January 1831.
6 For the so-called Hundreds of Sussex and Kent, and their relations to the
"Rapes "or " Lathes " of these Counties, see " The Hundred of Eastbourne and
its Six Boroughs," by Rev. William Hudson, Sussex Archaeological Collections,
vol. xlii. p. 189, 1899, and "Liberties and Franchises within the Rape of
Hastings," by W. D. Cooper, Sussex Archceological Collections, vol. vi., 1853,
pp. 57-70. " In Sussex," we learn of the thirteenth century, " each Hundred
seems to have had a Beadle, that is, a summoner, who was called an Alder-
man," and who sometimes performed the suit of court due by the tenants of
the Hundred at superior Courts (History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock
and F. W. Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 545). At Swanborough, one of these
60 THE COURT IN RUINS
The Hundred Courts which remained in private hands are
scarcely to be distinguished from the Courts of Franchises,
Liberties, Lordships, or Honours which had obtained exemption
from the jurisdiction of, or concurrent jurisdiction with, the
County Court. The Franchise or Liberty often included
several Hundreds. In the " Seven Hundreds " of Cirencester
in Gloucestershire, for instance, which had for five or six
centuries enjoyed great exemptions from the Sheriff of the
County, there continued to be held, in the eighteenth century,
a three-weekly Court under the Steward of Earl Bathurst.
Its business seems to have been exclusively the trial of
small civil suits, personal actions, and debts under forty
shillings. It was, we are told, regarded as " vexatious, dila-
tory, and expensive," and so was superseded in 1792 by the
effect of a Local Act, which created a Court of Bequests, under
seventy-five Commissioners, who took it in turn to sit as judges. 1
In Kent the " Seven Hundreds " constituted a Franchise,
having a Court of its own, held by the Bailiff. This Court
"Hundreds," which belongs to the Marquis of Abergavenny, and comprises
several parishes, " Boroughs," and Manors, the ancient Court of the Hundred
was held right down to our own day. There attended the Constable and
Alderman of the Hundred, the Headboroughs of the Parishes, and one or two
dozen jurymen. Annoyances and defaults were presented and amerced, and
civil suits under forty shillings were tried. The Jury presented persons to
serve as Constable and Alderman of the Hundred (down to 1860) and Head-
boroughs of the various parishes (down to 1842), of whom the Steward chose
one ("The Hundred of Swanborough," by J. Cooper, in Sussex Archaeological
Collections, vol. iv., October 1890). See also The Perambulation of Kent, by
W. Lambard, 1576, p. 21 ; Robinson on Gavelkind, 5th edition, by C. J. Elton
and H. J. H. Mackay, 1897, p. 211. Of the village of Lamberhurst we read
that "a fair is held here yearly on 10th October for toys and pedlary, the
profits of which the Portreeve of the Hundred of Milton receives of ancient
custom, which officer executed within this Hundred the office of Clerk of the
Market in all points whilst the Market was held, but it has been disused time
out of mind" (History of Kent, by E. Hasted, 1797 to 1801, vol. vii. p. 53).
For Tenterden Seven Hundreds, see History of the Weald of Kent, by R. Furley,
1871, vol. i. pp. 315-324, vol. ii. p. 555 ; History of the Weald of Kent, by
T. D. W. Dearn, 1814, pp. 162, 233-245 ; House of Commons Return of Courts
of Request, 1840.
1 History of Cirencester, by K. J. Beecham, 1887, pp. 162-170. This
Court of Requests was, like others, itself superseded after 1846 by the new
County Courts. We may mention here (though we have no information as to
their Courts) the analogous "Seven Hundreds" of Worcestershire, which had
of old such extensive immunities ; the Hundreds of Windsor Forest, and,
best known of all, the Chiltern Hundreds (Desborough, Stoke, and Bray in
Buckinghamshire), of which the Stewardship remaining, as it does, in the
gift of the Chancellor of the Exchequer has become a minor part of the
machinery of Parliamentary procedure (see The Stewardship of the Clillrrn
Hundreds, by F. 8. Parry, a privately printed Treasury Memorandum of 1893 ;
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 61
was held during the eighteenth century, and only discon-
tinued after the whole Franchise had been sold by the Crown
in 1817 to a private landowner. Within the Franchise, as
we learn from a survey of the time of the Commonwealth,
"there belongeth to each Hundred a Court Leet, where the
Constables and Borsholders are elected, and all nuisances are
amerced by the Steward and Jury, which Court is held when-
ever the Lord or Steward may appoint." In six of these "Seven
Hundreds" the Court used to be held by the Steward or Bailiff
for the profit of the Crown. In the seventh, comprising Tenter-
den, the chief town, the ownership of this so-called " royalty
of the Court of the Bailiwick of the Seven Hundreds" was
vested in the Mayor and twelve Jurats of the Municipal Cor-
poration, by whom the Court was, in 1814, still being held.
Throughout the wide area of Yorkshire there were Courts
in every Wapentake, the division corresponding with the
Hundred. We catch a glimpse of these Courts in 1641 in
the notebook of a Yorkshire farmer. "The baily [Bailiff] of
every Wapentake," he says, " is to keep a Court, which is
called the Wapentake Court, Three Weeks' Court, or Sheriffs'
Turn, where any petty cause or small trespass may be heard
and ended once within three weeks." In at least two Wapen-
takes these Courts continued to be held for more than two
centuries much as Henry Best describes them ; some remnants
lingering until the middle of the nineteenth century. 1
In Cheshire there continued to be held an active Hundred
Court for the Hundred of Wirral, which includes the town of
Birkeuhead. This was held on lease from the Crown until
1819, when it reverted to the Commissioners of Woods and
Forests, by whom it was sold in 1820 for 500 to a Liverpool
attorney. The Court continued for another generation to do
an extensive business in petty debt cases, especially those
arising in the rapidly growing town of Birkenhead. 2
" The Ancient Hundreds of Buckinghamshire," by Morley Davies, in Home
Co-unites Magazine, vol. vi. pp. 134-144 ; article by J. H. Round in Victoria
County History of Buckinghamshire, vol. i. 1905, p. 225).
1 Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641, by Henry Best, Surtees Society,
vol. xxxiii., 1857, p. 91 ; House of Commons Return of Courts of Request,
1840, pp. 170-171.
2 Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833 ;
House of Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and Courts of Request,
62 THE COURT IN RUINS
At least a score of other Hundred Courts continued to be
held in different parts of the country throughout the eighteenth,
aiid down to the middle of the nineteenth, century, 1 principally
as tribunals for the trial of small civil suits. We find them
also, here and there, appointing not only Bailiffs and Constables
for the Hundred or Liberty itself, 2 but also Constables and
Haywards for Manors within the Hundred, but not exercising
any other functions of the mediaeval Courts. Similarly, there
existed down to the same period a score of Courts of Honours,
Lordships, or Liberties, 3 which were not styled Hundred Courts,
1840 ; History of the Hundred of Wirrod, by W. Mortimer, 1847 ; Liverpool
Courier, 9th April 1869.
1 Among these other surviving Hundred Courts the principal were those for
the other Hundreds of Lancashire, Amounderness (held by a Steward for the
Duchy itself), West Derby (held by the Earl of Sefton), Lonsdale (held by the
Earl of Lonsdale) ; that held by the Duke of Richmond for "Richmondshire,"
comprising five Wapentakes of the North Riding of Yorkshire ; those of
Scarsdale and Chesterfield in Derbyshire, held by the Duke of Devonshire under
a grant of 1631 ; that of Bucklow (Cheshire), held on lease from the Crown by
the Egertons of Tatton ; that of Grumbald's Ash (Gloucestershire), held by the
Duke of Beaufort under lease from the Crown down to 1835, until which date
it appointed Constables and Haywards for the Manors within the Hundred, as
well as tried petty debt cases ; those of Chew Magna (Somerset), which ceased to
be held about 1836 ; Keynsham (Wiltshire), Portbury (Wiltshire), Whit-
stone (Wiltshire), Offlow (Staffordshire), Durnford (Sussex) ; St. Briavel's
(Gloucestershire), held by a Steward for the Crown ; Henbury (Gloucestershire),
Thornbury (Gloucestershire) ; Huntingstone (Huntingdonshire), belonging to the
Earl of Sandwich ; Penwith (Cornwall), Pain's Castle (Radnor), and the Duke of
Beaufort's Court Baron for the Hundred of Crickhowell (Breconshire). Some
particulars as to their activity in 1830-40 may be gathered from the Fifth
Report of the Commission on Courts of Common Law, 1833, and the House of
Commons Returns of Hundred Courts, 1839, and Courts of Request, 1840.
2 " Bailiffs and Constables of Hundreds .are chosen annually at the Courts
Leet for the several Hundreds and Liberties within the County " (A Guide to
the Practice of the Court of Quarter Sessions for the County of Somerset, by J.
Jesse, 1815, p. 20).
3 Such as the Nottinghamshire Peverel Court, held by Lord Middleton as
Steward, and exercising jurisdiction, concurrently with the two County Courts,
within the whole of the Counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire except the
Corporate towns ; Tutbury Honour Court, held by the Duke of Devonshire at
Tutbury (Staffordshire) every three weeks for civil actions by residents within
the Honour, which included parts of no fewer than six Counties and had its
own Coroner as well as its own Bailiff (Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals,
by J. C. Cox, pp. 71-84) ; the Court Baron of the Honour of Pontefract (York-
shire), with jurisdiction over 350 townships, in a district of 600 square miles,
and held twice a year each at Leeds, Bradford, and Huddersfield ; Allertonshire
Liberty Court (Yorkshire), held by the Bishop of Ripon every three weeks, for the
thirty-two townships within the Liberty ; the Court of the Liberty and Honour
of Pickering Lythe (Yorkshire), held twice a year only ; Skipton Honour Court
(Yorkshire), held under Letters Patent of 1307 by the Earl of Thanet as Lord
of the Honour ; Whitby Strand Liberty Court, held by the Cholmleys as Bailiffs
THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED 63
but which exercised jurisdiction over areas within which there
were at least several Manors, and which occasionally extended
to hundreds of square miles. We cannot help regretting that
so little examination has been made of the sixteenth, seven-
teenth, and eighteenth century records of these Hundred
Courts, and other Courts of wider jurisdiction than that of a
Manor, from which additional light might be thrown on
the relations of the different Courts of the ancient
Hierarchy. 1
of the Liberty, in succession to the Abbots of Whitby (Yorkshire) ; Kidwelly
Honour or Lordship and Liberty Court, held by the Earl of Cawdor for three
"commotes" of Carmarthenshire, comprising nineteen Manors and sixteen
Parishes ; Perfeth Court Baron, also held by the Earl of Cawdor, as Lord of
the Lordship ; the Court of Pleas for the Honour of Leicester, held by a steward
for the Duchy of Lancaster, in some connection with the Courts Leet of nine
Manors within the Honour ; the Ramsey Court of Pleas, held under ancient
charters by the Lord of the Liberty of Ramsey (Huntingdonshire) ; Ampthill
Honour Court (Bedfordshire), not held for the trial of actions after the
eighteenth century ; Bromfield and Yale Lordship Court (Denbighshire), held at
the beginning of the eighteenth century by the Grosvenors as Lords of the
Lordship ; and various other Welsh Lordship Courts, such as Chirk, which
ceased to be held in consequence of an adverse judgment of the Court of King's
Bench about 1827 (Williams v. Lord Bagot, Reports of Cases, by Barnewall and
Cresswell, vol. iii. pp. 235, 772, etc.). With these should perhaps be classed the
great Wakefield Court Baron held by the Lord of the extensive jurisdiction of
Wakefield, which included, by 1835, a quarter of a million inhabitants, and
exercised important functions in connection with weights and measures, as well
as dealing with a couple of thousand civil actions annually. Some information
about them in 1830-40 may be gathered from the House of Commons Returns
of Hundred Courts, 1838, and Courts of Request, etc., 1840, and the Fifth
Report of the Royal Commission on the Courts of Common Law, 1833.
1 We cannot pretend to deal with the various Forest Courts, held under
picturesque names in districts which were technically royal forests. The special
forest laws (as to which the various editions of John Manwood's Forest Laws,
from 1598 to 1665, were authoritative) apparently ceased to be enforced after
the Commonwealth, the Act " for the limitation of Forests," 16 Charles I. c. 16
(1640), having practically brought the old system to an end. Some attempt
was made to revive the Courts on the Restoration ; but we do not actually know
that either the six- weekly "Court of Attachment" or "Woodmote," the
"Court of Regard" every third year, or the "Court of Justice Seat" was held
after the Revolution (Life of Lord Justice Guilford, by the Hon. Roger North,
1808, vol. i. p. 75 ; The Rural Life of England, by William Howitt, 1838,
vol. ii. p. 59). But Courts continued to be held, sometimes under the
ancient forest name of "Swainmote" or "Swanimote," sometimes under that
of Halmote Court, in various forest districts, especially in the Forest of Dean,
though they seem to have decayed rapidly after the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, and to have become often formal only. To this day,
however, in the Forest of Dean, the Steward of the Crown holds his Court
annually at the '' Speech House," wearing a cocked hat, and equipped with a
sword. We may yet read The Rights of His Majesty's Forest Asserted, in a
Charge given at a Swanimote Court held . . . before the Verderers of the Forest
of Windsor, 1717, by Nathaniel Boothe, Steward of the Court, 1719; and
64 THE COURT IN RUINS
The Court of the Hundred, where it continued into the
eighteenth century, retained, as we have seen, little beyond its
function as a tribunal for petty actions of debt, combining
with this, in a few instances, the more or less formal appoint-
ment of Constables and other officers. This was not the case
with the innumerable Manor Courts that existed in 1689,
many of which continued, right into the nineteenth century,
to be active local authorities, managing the commonfields and
pastures, suppressing nuisances, providing the police, and trying
cases of debt and trespass in the little communities over which
they had jurisdiction. 1 It is, in fact, the existence of the
humble Court of the Manor, much more than that of the
enigmatical and pretentious Courts of the Hundred, Honour,
Barony, or Forest, that compels us to include the Lord's Court
in our survey of English Local Government between 1689
and 1835.
It is significant that this Court of the Manor, as we find
"The Rolls of the Court of Attachment of the Royal Forest of Walthara"
between 1713 and 1848 are printed as vol. v. of the Report of the Epping
Forest Commissioners, 1873. See Select Pleas of the Forest, by G. J. Turner
(Selden Society, 1901) ; Remarks on Forest Scenery, by W. Gilpin, 1791, with a
good list of Forests ; Historical Inquiries concerning Forests and Forest Laws,
by Percival Lewis, 1811 ; the statutes of 1817 and 1829 ; an able article in
Edinburgh Review, April 1902 ; Ihe Royal Forests of England, by J. C. Cox,
1905 ; and A History of English Law, by Prof. W. S. Holdsworth, 1903, pp.
340-352. Also the various reports of the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and
Land Revenues, especially those of 1788 and 1853 ; that of the House of
Commons Committees on the Forest of Dean, 1874, and on the Woods and
Forests, 1889 and 1890 ; Report on the Forest of Dean, by H. C. Hill,
published by the Stationery Office, 19th July 1887 ; The Forest of Dean, by
H. G. Nicholls, 1858 ; an exceptionally well-informed article in The English
Historical Review, vol. xxi., 1906, pp. 445-459 ; The History of the Forest of
Dean in Gloucestershire, by John Nisbet ; History of Knaresborough, by Eli
Hargrove, 1798 ; Histoi'y of the Forest of Rossendale, by T. Newbigging, 1868 ;
The Honour and Forest of Pickering, by R. B. Turton (North Riding Record
Society, N.S., vols. i.-iii., 1894-96); The Forest of Essex, by W. R. Fisher,
1887 ; Annals of tlie Ancient Royal Forest of Exmoor, by E. J. Rawle, 1893 ;
The Great Forest of Brecknock, by John Lloyd, 1905 ; vol. ii. of the Victoria
County History of Hampshire, 1905, pp. 409-470, for the New Forest; and
chap, iv., "Forest Police," in The History of Police in England, by Captain
Melville Lee.
1 "Every Manor," it was said, "is a little Commonwealth whereof the
tenants are the members, the land the body, and the Lord the head" (The
Surveyor's Dialogue, by John Norden, 4th edition, 1738, p. 44).
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 65
it existing after 1689 from one end of England to the other,
is an Undifferentiated Court. Whatever it may be termed by
the Steward, it combines and confuses in its actual procedure
and work the attributes which the sixteenth-century lawyer
ascribed to his three or four distinct tribunals. In the vast
majority of the Manors that we have examined, we see the
Steward giving notice, once or twice a year, that he would
hold, not the various separate Courts given in the text-books,
but, under one name or other, simply the Lord's Court. This
might be held in the open air, beneath some aged tree j" 1 it
might, as at Selborne in Hampshire, be in an ancient barn of
the Manor farm ; 2 it might be at the Lord's Manor-house
(perhaps for this reason in Southern England often called a
Court) ; 8 or occasionally in some old building in the village
known as the Court House, 4 or even, in a few cases, the Town
Hall, or Gild Hall. 5 It was a common practice to " open the
Court " at the ancient place and then instantly to adjourn to
the largest room of the village inn. 6 There would be a
customary date for holding the Court, which would be seldom
departed from it might be soon after Michaelmas or Easter ;
it might, as at Coggeshall in Essex, be on Whit Monday ; 7 it
might, as at Andover in Hampshire, be "the Sunday next
before St. Michael " ; 8 in many of the Manors of the Bishop
of Winchester we read of " the Turn of St. Martin," or " the
1 Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii.
p. 9. At Newton (Norfolk), in 1531, it was "under the oak " (The Manor and
Manorial Records, by N. J. Hone, 1906, p. 132).
2 Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by R. B. Fisher, 1794, p. 59.
3 Or " place, " which maybe from "placitum" (Treatise on Copyholds, by
Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 11). Mr. Seebohm connects
" Court " with " curtis," which. is "so often applied to the later Manor-house " ;
and with the " cohortes " around a Roman villa {English Village Community,
by F. Seebohm, 1883, p. 263).
4 So at Epworth in Lincolnshire (see History and Topography of the Isle of
Axholme, by Rev. W. B. Stonehouse, 1839, pp. 143-149).
6 At Coggeshall in Essex the Court was always held at the Shambles in the
market-place (Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkius, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii.
p. 574). At Bungay it was held "in the Corn Cross," until the demolition of
that building in 1810 (History of Suffolk, by Rev. A. Suckling, 1846, p. 129).
8 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 9.
At Yardley Hastings, in Northamptonshire, the Court was always formally
opened in an ancient hall in the village, and then adjourned to the village inn
(Practical Treatise on Copyhold Tenure, by John Scriven, 1816, p. 5).
7 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 574.
8 Firma Burgi, by Thos. Madox, 1726, p. 210; Treatise on Copyholds,
by Charles Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 477.
VOL. II. PT. I F
66 THE COURT IN RUINS
Turn of Hock " ; l it might even be, as in a Manor near
Kochford, Essex, "at cockcrowing, before the day was well
light." 2 At such a Court in different Manors called in-
differently the View of Frankpledge, the Court Baron, 8 the
Turn, the Court Leet, the Lawday, the Leet, or simply the
Great Court or the Little Court there would attend most of
the men of the village, whether freeholders or copyholders,
leaseholders or cottagers. In Manor after Manor we find
evidence that some sort of roll of names was read over, and
defaulters fined. Thus at Standon in Staffordshire, during the
eighteenth century, the fine for non-attendance was a shilling
for freeholders, sixpence for leaseholders and other tenants of
the Manor, and twopence for cottagers. 4 Elsewhere it often
seems to have been only the freehold or copyhold tenants of
the Manor whose attendance was insisted on. At Braintree
in 1653 the tenants who did not appear were severally fined
three shillings; in 1665, freeholders two shillings and copy-
holders one shilling ; whilst in 1732 the absent freeholders
had to pay only a shilling each and the copyholders half a
crown. 5 At Devonport, about 1800, we read that "all the
tenants are obliged to attend, or be amerced two and sixpence." 6
1 See MS. Manor Rolls, Farnliam, Surrey, 8th October 1717, for one of many
examples.
2 " The Honour of Eayleigh in Essex . . . hath a Custom Court kept yearly
the Wednesday next after St. Michael's Day ; the Court is kept in the night
and without light but as the sky gives, at a little hill without the town called
the King's Hill, where the Steward writes only with coals and not with ink.
And many men and Manors of great worth hold of the same, and do suit unto
this strange Court, where the Steward calls them with as low a voice as possible
he may ; giving no notice when he goes to the Hill to keep the same Court ;
and he that attends not is deeply amerced if the Steward will"' (The Surveyor's
Dialogue, by John Norden, 4th edition, 1738, p. 161). How much truth and
how much significance there was in this account of what was apparently nick-
named "the Lawless Court" we cannot say (see Law Dictionary, by John
Cowell, 1727, under this appellation ; Treatise on Copyholds, by Charles Watkins,
4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 9).
3 Court Barou is clearly "curia baronis," and the meaning of "curia
baronis " is significantly explained by the variant "curia nobilis viri R.R."
that we find as the title of the Braintree Court in the earliest roll (1616). It
was simply the Lord's Court. There seems to have been every variety in the
name borne by the Court in different Manors, and we can trace little connection,
in the period 1689-1835, between these variations of name and the equally great
variations in function.
4 The History of Standon, by Edward Salt, 1888.
6 MS. Manor Rolls, Braintree (Essex).
The, Plymouth Dock Guide, p. 28 (circa 1800). At Leamington the Earl of
Aylesford, as Lord of the Manor, revived the Lord's Court in that Manor in
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 67
An indisputable element in the Lord's Court, and the
primum mobile upon which all its action depended, was the
Jury or Homage, the sample of the inhabitants by which the
community as a whole was represented. The Jury was
always formally summoned by the Bailiff or Beadle, at the
command of the Steward, but exactly in what way the im-
portant task of selection was performed is seldom to be dis-
covered. It may be that, in some cases, the tenants of the
Manor were supposed to be taken haphazard in rotation. In
some Manors, as we have reason to believe, the choice
was controlled by the Steward. In the Manor of Dymock,
Gloucestershire, by ancient custom recorded in 1565 and
1657, the Steward chose one "free-bencher" and the tenants
another, these two jointly selecting the twelve tenants who
were to form "the Lord's Homage." In case of their dis-
agreement, the Steward decided. 1 On the other hand, a
learned lawyer writes in 1825 that, "So far at least as my
own experience extends, the Steward of the Court is totally
ignorant even of the names of the jurors until the delivery to
him by the Bailiff of the persons summoned as jurymen,
together with the resiant roll, or names of those who are
liable to perform suit to the Lord at the particular Court." 2
The Jury was sometimes appointed to serve until the
holding of the next Court, and sometimes appointed, sworn,
and discharged at each Court. 3 The number varied, twelve
1828, after ninety years' desuetude. "Over 900 householders answered to their
names and paid their fines" (Complete History of Royal Leamington Spa, by
T. H. B. Dudley, 1896-97, pp. 188-89). A Steward who holds Courts in many
Manors in the Southern Counties informed us (1906) that when he first took
in this duty he frequently found the villagers swarming to the Court, though
it was called a Court Baron, and they were neither freeholders nor copyholders.
These residents presented themselves as of old, believing vaguely that they had
some right or were under some obligation to attend ; and they were sometimes
much aggrieved at being told that they had no part in the ceremony.
1 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. pp.
487-491.
2 Treatise on Copyholds, by John Scriven, 2nd edition, 1823, vol. ii.
p. 845.
3 "The Jurymen," says Ritson, "in some Manors continue in office for a
whole year, while in others they are sworn and discharged in the course of the
day" (Jurisdiction of the Courts Leet, by Joseph Ritson, 1816, p. 9). "In
some Manors it is not the practice to summon a fresh Jury whenever a Court is
held, but the same tenants are summoned for successive Courts, vacancies in
the list being filled from time to time by the Steward, or by the permanent
Foreman and the Steward together " (Law of Copyhofds, by 0. I. Elton and
H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition, 1893, pp. 197-198).
68 THE COURT IN RUINS
or more being the most frequent. Here again, whilst we find
some of the names used by the lawyers, we seek in vain for
some of their distinctions. In the Court at Braintree the
well-kept records make it clear that there was only one Jury,
which consisted, as the names reveal, of the ordinary house-
holders of the little town ; and which made all the present-
ments of the Court. In the Court of the "Honour and
Manor" of Hampton Court, between 1800 and 1808, we
find the twelve to fourteen jurors described as " the jurors as
well for the Court Leet as for the Court Baron and Customary
Court " there being, in fact, only one Jury for what was, in
practice, a single undifferentiated Court. So, in many scores
of Manors in ecclesiastical hands, within the dioceses of
Canterbury, London, and Winchester, of which we have been
permitted to consult the Manor Eolls, we find that the Jury
was sworn as the Jury of the King and the Lord; though
where business affecting property had to be done it was
frequently styled also the Homage. On the other hand, at
Epworth, in Lincolnshire, there were, in 17*76 at any rate,
clearly two Juries, but these were not called the Homage and
the Leet Jury respectively ; nor did their several functions
correspond with the lawyer's distinctions. They are referred
to as the Grand Jury and the Copyhold Jury. The " Grand
Jury and Inquest of the Manor" termed in 1587 "inquisitio
magna," when thirty persons were sworn apparently dealt
indifferently with pleas of debt, successions to property, pre-
sentments of such public nuisances as short weight in bread,
presentments of such common misdemeanours as assaults and
affrays, and presentments (in 1631) of such Manorial offences
as " trespasses in the sown fields " by wandering beasts.
"The Grand Jury," it was solemnly recorded in 1776, "may
settle disputes on freehold lands, as to the boundaries, etc.,
and the Copyhold Jury may do the same on copyhold lands.
The Grand Jury may make Bylaws, and compel observance
of the same." We gather that " offences within the Manor,"
including public nuisances, were presented indifferently by
either Jury. 1
1 "Notes from the Court Rolls of the Manor of Epworth," by Charles
Jackson, The Reliquary, vol. xxiii., 1883, pp. 44-48, 89-92, and 174-175 ;
History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme, by Rev. W. B. Stonehouse,
1839, pp. 143-149. On the other hand, we find the term Grand Jury used
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 69
The presentments of the Jury, when accepted by the
Steward, and (in the case of amercements) " affeered " or
revised by the affeerors, became the findings of the Court.
These presentments appear to have comprised indifferently
the recital of the customs of the Manor, the making of new
By-laws, the appointment of officers, the verdicts in the civil
actions tried, and the conviction and the fining of offenders,
whether in respect of public nuisances, Manorial defaults,
breaches of By-laws, or such misdemeanours as assaults, affrays,
and even petty larcenies. These presentments were made by
the Jury, either " on their own view and knowledge," or upon
the testimony of one or other of the officers of the Court or
other witnesses ; l or, in civil suits, after hearing the parties
to the suits, and, it may be, their counsel and witnesses. We
imagine that, in many instances, the presentments were dis-
cussed by the Jury, then and there, in open Court, and
written down by the most practised scribe among them. On
the other hand, there is reason to believe that these pre-
sentments were sometimes drawn up and signed by the Jury-
men in a separate meeting. "For the most part," writes an
experienced lawyer at the end of the eighteenth century,
" they generally come ready prepared with them, and deliver
a copy of them signed by the several tenants to the Steward
to enter in the Court rolls " 2 a duty which he sometimes
neglected to perform.
The officers of the Court might be few or numerous, and
they differed from Manor to Manor, in their numbers and in
their titles, far more according to the size and character
of the community than with any relation to the particular
name of the Court. The Lord's Steward summoned and
presided over the Court whatever it was called. The Bailiff,
though this title is sometimes used as synonymous with
Eeeve or Greave, was always the Lord's man, selected by the
Steward. The residents or homagers whose presence was
specially required as jurymen were warned to attend by the
simply for a Court Leet Jury ; as, for instance, in Jurisdiction of the Courts
Lcet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 3.
1 Where the Jury "are discharged the same day," says Ritson, "it should
seem necessary for them to proceed chiefly upon evidence ; and, indeed, there
is generally, if not always, a proclamation for that purpose " (Jurisdiction of
the C&urts Leet, by J. Ritson, 3rd edition, 1816, p. 24).
2 Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 383.
70 THE COURT IN RUINS
Bailiff whether the Court was styled Court Baron or Court
Leet. We find Keeves, Hay wards, and Herdsmen appointed
at the same Court, whatever its appellation, as Constables,
Ale-tasters, and Scavengers. We find Courts calling themselves
nothing but Courts Baron nevertheless appointing Head-
boroughs, Constables, Ale-tasters, and Scavengers ; making
presentments on all sorts of subjects ; and seizing light weights
and short measures. 1 We find Courts calling themselves
nothing but Courts Leet nevertheless appointing Reeves and
Haywards and a variety of functionaries whose business it was
to manage the common pasture. It is extremely rare to find
any definite salary assigned to any of these officers 2 the
Court had, indeed, normally no Corporate funds out of which
such a salary could be paid but we suspect that some small
provision for the remuneration of some of them was not in-
frequent. Thus we read of " Constable's acres," " Eeevewick
lands," and " Beadlewick lands," which were either held by
the tenure of service in turn as Constable or as Reeve and
Beadle respectively, or else were enjoyed for the year by those
who served in those offices. 3 Sometimes there was a particular
profitable right attached to one of the offices, such as the
profits of the pound, the forfeitures of swine found unringed or
at large, or the money penalties incurred for breach of stint
of common. More usually, however, the officers found such
remuneration as they got in their power to exact small
customary fees. The profitable character of the Steward's
fees is often alluded to. " Court-keeping " on behalf of Lords
of Manors, or as deputy for their Stewards, was, at any rate
in the seventeenth century, one of the recognised means of
1 As, for instance, at Torquay ; sec History of Torquay, by J. T. White,
1878, p. 134.
2 The leading instance of a Lord's Court having salaried officers, and, down
to 1780, levying its own rate for their payment, is that of Manchester, which
we subsequently describe in detail (p. 99). In the Manors of Stepney and
Hackney, in 1622, then almost entirely rural in character, the Reeve was in each
case entitled to a salary of 2 : 13 : 4 and 3:6:8, together with a piece of
cloth for a coat (Treatise on Copyfwlds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
vol. ii. pp. 508-533).
3 The Village Community, by G. L. Gomine, 1890, pp. 274-275. We note
that in the fourteenth century, in Forncett Manor, there were 20 acres designated
"Reeveship lands," and 15 acres " Messorship lands," which were charged with
an annual burden of two shillings per acre for the 'benefit of the two tenants
serving those offices (The Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, 1086-
1565, by F. G. Davenport, 1906, pp. 50-51).
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 71
livelihood for the young barrister. 1 But there were evidently
other fees. The Bailiff or Beadle of the Court might, for
instance, get a fee for administering the oath to persons
newly appointed. " He had been sworn in as a Pig-ringer by
the Court Leet, and paid fourpence for his oath," deposed
one of the parties to a settlement case in 1792, when the
judges held that this office was one " of great antiquity and
serviceable to the parish." 2 Whether the Court of the Manor,
calling itself either Court Leet or Court Baron, had any legal
authority to levy any compulsory tax, was never decided by the
Superior Courts. But it was not uncommon for the Jury, in
order to provide the Reeve or Hayward or Fieldsmen with the
small sums necessary to effect petty improvements in the
commonfields, or to carry out certain necessary repairs, to
order that a levy of a few pence or a few shillings per beast
should be made, the amount being collected from all the
users of the common lands by the officers concerned. 3 We
occasionally see this simple financial transaction expanding
into a system of buying and selling " stints," or rights of
common, either for the common benefit or for the convenience
of individual owners. We may even find instances (as at
Great Tew) of the levy being made, not per beast, but on the
annual value of all the tenements, like the Poor Bate. 4
.The Undifferentiated Court, as it existed between 1689
and 1835, might conceivably be the result of a gradual co-
alescence and merging of previously existing separate Courts ;
or it might, as we are inclined to believe, be a continuance of
1 1 James I. c. 5 (1603) ; see the Autobiography of the Hon. Roger North,
edited by Rev. A. Jessopp, 1887, for a good description of " court-keeping " about
1680. " Some few years ago there was a design of bringing a Bill into Parliament
for regulating the fees of Stewards of Manors, but the Legislature thought
it much too delicate a matter to interfere in, and the design was dropped "
(Treatise on Copylmlds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 454).
2 R. v. Inhabitants of Whittlesey, 4 J.R. 807 ; Fenland Notes and Queries,
vol. i. p. 253. In London, in the nineteenth century, the unfortunate house-
holder compelled by a surviving Manorial Court to serve as Constable was some-
times mulcted of half a crown by the officer of the Court who administered the
oath (Second Report on the State of the Police in the Metropolis, 1817, p. 394).
3 To cite one example out of many, the Court of Hitchin in 1819 levied
fifteen pence per beast (English Village Community, by F. Seebohm, 1883, pp.
443-453).
4 In a few exceptional cases, of which we shall subsequently describe
Manchester and Lewes as the chief, this levy by the Lord's Court became a
substantial rate for the purposes of urban government (pp. 103, 173).
7* THE COURT IN RUINS
a simple tribunal, in which the process of differentiation had
not yet begun. But it is not uncommon to find, where two
or more sessions of the Court are held each year, a certain
difference made between the business done at these several
occasions. What we have called the property business the
admissions and surrenders, and the receipt of fines and heriots
took place, if required, apparently at every Court. The
trial of civil actions took place, apparently, from three weeks
to three weeks, or whenever the Court was held, a Jury being
summoned only when required. The appointment of officers,
whether Keeve, Beadle, or Hay ward on the one hand, or
Constable, Ale-taster, or Scavenger on the other, occurred only
once a year, normally at the Michaelmas Court. Sometimes
the presentment of nuisances and other specifically Court Leet
business is confined to the same occasion, which is often
designated as the Lawday, 1 the View of Frankpledge, or the
Leet. 2 In the Manor of Wistow (Yorkshire) the particular
Sessions of the Lord's Court that was held at Lammas was
" the fearing (i.e. affeering) Court," at which apparently the
amercements of offenders were assessed. 3 During the eighteenth
century we meet with a certain number of cases in which the
Steward has plainly attempted to distinguish between the busi-
ness done by this Court. Thus at Braintree, from 1709 onwards,
the Steward tries to make a distinction in his records between
the Court Leet on the one hand and the Court Baron and
Customary Court on the other. There is still only one Court
held, and only one Jury summoned. But the appointment of
Constables and other officers, together with the presentments
of nuisances, are entered in the book under the heading " Visus
franc plegum cur." ; whilst a separate heading on the same
1 Thus the customs of the Manor of Worplesdon in Surrey prescribed that
Courts were to be held twice a year, once with a Lawday (Law of Copyholds,
by Chas. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 559). At Braunton in Devon-
shire there used to be "Monthly Courts" for dealing with civil suits, and four
times a year a " Law Court," at one of which a Reeve, Ale-tasters, Pound-keeper,
Crier, Beadle, and " Gatewardens " (perhaps from gate, meaning a lane) were
appointed ("The Customs of the Manors of Braunton," by R. Dymond, in Trails-
actions of the Devon Association, vol. xx., 1888, pp. 254-303).
2 In the Manor of Wimbledon (Surrey) the Easter Court was the one desig-
nated as the Leet, when the Headboroughs of the several tithings had to attend
(Law of Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. pp. 554-556).
3 History of the Parishes of Sherburn and Ccnvood, by W. Wheater, 1882,
p. 281.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 73
page, " Modo d. Cur. Baron et Customar," precedes the formal
presentment and fining of absent freehold and copyhold
tenants of the Manor, the admissions of new tenants, and the
recording of property transfers. 1 In the Manor of Hitchin,
where the rolls of 1471 describe the Court simply as "the
View of Frankpledge, with the Court held there," those
between 1721 and 1819 reveal a Court which styles itself
Court Leet and Court Baron, but having only one Jury,
called the Homage, doing all the business that was done
appointing Herdsmen and " Pit -keepers," regulating the
common herd and the enjoyment of the common pasturage,
levying a rate of fifteenpence per beast, and presenting
dangerous footpaths and other nuisances. 2 At the beginning
b
of the nineteenth century the language of the entries changes.
We hear not only of the Homage, but of "jurors for our
Lord the King," who make presentments of encroachments,
digging gravel on the common, and other offences for
which fines are imposed and made payable to " the Lord of
the Leet." But this same Jury is presently found equally
presenting the deaths of tenants of the Manor and the
admission of new ones. From 1819 onward the proceedings
become still more differentiated according to the lawyers'
formula. The Court still held as one Court only is now
styled " the Court of the View of Frankpledge of our Sovereign
Lord the King with the General Court Baron of W. W.,
Esquire." There are both " jurors of our Lord the King " and
" the Homage of this Court." They jointly declare " the
1 This is the common form adopted by the Stewards of some scores of Manors
in the South of England belonging to Bishops and chapters, of which, by the
kind permission of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, we have been enabled to
examine the rolls. But these Stewards have usually grouped, along with the
Leet presentments of the "Jury of the King and of the Lord," other present-
ments which clearly form part of the Court Baron business, such as those of the
deaths of freeholders of the Manor and of encroachments on the Lord's waste
confining those under the heading "Modod. Cur. Baron" to other property
business. We may here note that these ecclesiastical Manor rolls were mostly
kept in Latin down to the middle of the eighteenth century, or several genera-
tions later than was elsewhere customary.
2 MS. Manor Rolls, Hitchin (Herts), for 1470-1471, in Public Record Office
(portfolio 177, No. 60) ; and those from 1721 onward, in possession of the
Commissioners of Woods and Forests, to whom we are indebted for the privilege
of inspection. The roll for 1819 is printed in The English Village Community,
by F. Seebohm, 1883, pp. 443-453 ; see also History of Hertfordshire, by N.
Salmon, 1728, p. 162 ; The Royal Manor of Hitchin, by Wentworth Huyshe, 1906.
74 THE COURT IN RUINS
boundaries, extent, rights, jurisdiction, and customs of tho
said Manor." The Lord, they assert, has " Court Leet and
View of Frankpledge " twice a year, and also " General and
Special Courts Baron and Customary Courts at his will."
The Court Leet appoints two Constables, six Headboroughs,
two Aleconners, two Leather Searchers and Sealers, and one
Bellman, who acts also as Watchman and Crier. The Leet
Jury presents various nuisances. The Homage has its own
presentments about the customs relating to property, the
freedom of the market from tolls, and the obligation of the
Lord to provide the pound and stocks. Can we believe that
this new and sudden elaboration of what had, for three
centuries at least, been a single undifferentiated Court, with a
single Jury, indicates anything more than the historical
knowledge and antiquarian zeal of a new Steward of the
Manor ?
Whatever was the Court, its business was, it is clear, of
the most varied kind. Thus, in the little town of Brain tree in
Essex, which we have already described as being ruled by an
enigmatical Select Vestry, or " Four and Twenty," l we see the
Lord's Court, between 1616 and 1813, appointing Constables,
Ale-tasters, Fish and Flesh Tasters, and Leather Searchers;
presenting nuisances as distinguished from Manorial defaults ;
enforcing the Assizes of Bread and Ale ; punishing the usual
market offences; acting down to 1713 in conjunction with
the Company of the Twenty-four that we have already
described as the Parish Vestry ; and even levying rates
on the inhabitants for repairing the common pump and
scavenging the streets. At the same meetings of the Court
we have the admission of new tenants of the Manor, the
transfer of properties on death or alienation, and, by the same
Jury, the presentment of encroachments on the Lord's waste,
and the defaults of tenants in not scouring ditches. In the
little Manor of Standon, for which the rolls exist from 1338
to 1773, we see the Lord's Court, down to the first quarter of
the eighteenth century at any rate, equally combining both
Court Baron and Court Leet business making presentments
of highway and other nuisances and forbidding the harbouring
of vagrants and also dealing with admissions, heriots, convey-
1 English Local Government, Vol. I. The Parish and the County.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 75
ances, encroachments on the waste, defaults of tenants, and
other property matters. 1 So in the interesting Lord's Court
at Epvvorth that we have already mentioned, the " customs "
elaborately recorded in 1776 reveal a tribunal at which By-
laws were made, nuisances were presented, the common
pasturage was regulated, officers were appointed, offenders
were fined, new tenants of the Manor were admitted, the fines
for copyhold alienations were fixed, and civil suits between
tenants of the Manor were determined. 2 At Devonport, as we
are told by a local chronicler about 1800, 3 the Lord's Court
" has the privilege of Court Leet and Court Baron, which is
annually held some time in the month of October. ... It
has the power of fines and even of imprisonment for small
offences ; and all horses, cattle, implements, and utensils of any
kind which shall appear to a Coroner's Jury to have occasioned
the death of any person within the Manor, be it of whatever
kind or value, are liable to be forfeited to the Lord of the Manor."
A less familiar function of the Lord's Court, and one that
we suspect was, even in 1689, still of greater public interest
to every inhabitant of the village than those hitherto described,
was the management of the agricultural operations of the little
community. In nearly every Manor there were common
pastures ; sometimes woods into which the tenants of the
Manor might send their pigs ; sometimes valuable hay-meadows
shared by lot or by a primitive scramble ; more frequently
large open " commons " of coarse herbage ; and invariably
roadside strips and odds and ends of unoccupied land forming
part of " the Lord's waste." The simple acts of administration
which the enjoyment of these common rights involved formed
part of the business of every Manor Court. We see appointed
1 History of Standon, by Edward Salt, 1888.
2 History and Topography of the Isle o/Axholmc, by Rev. W. B. Stoneliouse,
1839, pp. 143-149.
3 The Plymouth Dock Guide (circa 1800), p. 28. The right of the Lord
of the Manor to deodand, or forfeiture of any article causing the death of a
human being, was not abolished until 1846 (9 and 10 Victoria, c. 62 ; see
The King's Coroner, by R. H. Wellington, 1905, p. 169). Besides knives and
bludgeons, horses and cattle, the wheel of a vehicle and a mill-wheel have been
thus forfeited. In 1841, after an accident on the Great Western Railway at
Sonuing, a railway carriage is said to have been taken by the Lord of the Manor
as a deodand. In 1840 the deodand was valued by the Jury at 2000 in the
case of an accident on the London and Birmingham Railway (Monthly Law
iic, vol. x.. 1841, p. 15).
76 THE COURT IN RUINS
such officers as Herdsmen, 1 to drive out and borne, and watch
over, the pigs, sheep or cattle, horses or asses that the individual
proprietors contributed to the common herd or flock. There
are Common Drivers 2 to see that only the cattle and horses
of the tenants of the Manor use the commons, and these only
up to the permitted number, or " stint of common," free from
disease and properly marked. There are Pig-ringers, whose
duty it is to prevent any swine wandering on the wastes
without being properly ringed. There is a Finder or Pound-
keeper, who arrests stray beasts or animals found at large in
contravention of any of the regulations of the little community,
and confines them in the Pound, until the owner redeems them
by the customary small fine or fee. It is part of the business
of the Lord's Court not only to appoint these officers, but also
to supervise their work, to make and revise the By-laws that
they enforce, and to give them any necessary instructions
from time to time.
The agricultural functions of the Lord's Court extended,
however, to much more than the administration of the common
pastures. The England of 1689 was still, in the main, a
country of " common fields " wide expanses of arable laud,
divided into innumerable narrow strips called "pieces," "selions,"
or "lands," all in separate ownership, but thrown open after
harvest to common pasture ; cultivated severally by their
owners upon a uniform system, usually that of the well-known
three years' course. 8 Each Manor had its particular order
of cultivation, by which, for instance, approximately one-third
of its arable area was devoted, in rotation, to "tilthgrain"
or winter corn, " etchgrain " or spring corn, and fallow. This
" open field " system of agriculture involved a great deal of
collective regulation, which fell, as we shall show, to the Jury
at the Lord's Court, acting through officers for whom the most
significant title was that of Fieldsmen. 4
1 Termed also Swineherds, Hogreeves, Neatherds or Noltherds, Common
Herds, Shepherds, etc. At Hornsea there was a " Nowtherd, whose office it was
to look after the sheep in the pastures" (An Accowni of Hornsea in Holdcrness in
the East Riding of Yorkshire, by E. W. B., 1847-64).
2 Or Common Keeper ; often, we suspect, called Haywards, Finders, etc.
3 See, for instance, the evidence yielded by ' ' the Elizabethan Village
Surveys," described by W. J. Corbett in Transactions of Royal Historical
Society, N.S. ix., 1897, pp. 67-87.
4 Or Burlcymeu or Bylaw-men. In the Manor of Hornsea, four "sworn
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 77
We do not think that the extent and complication of this
agricultural business of the Lord's Court has been at all
adequately realised. Professor Maitland, for instance, to
whom we in common with all students of English institutions
owe the deepest gratitude, suggests that " so far as the arable
land is concerned, the common field husbandry, when once it
has been started, requires little regulation. . . . The truth is
that if you have cut up a field into acre strips, given a parcel
of dispersed strips to each of many men, and given to each man
a right to turn out his beasts on the whole field during a cer-
tain part of the year, you have made an arrangement which
maintains itself with unhappy ease. These men must follow
the accustomed course. If one man strives to break through
it, he must straightway trample on his neighbour's crops or
suffer his own to be trampled on, for only as a rare exception
is there a beaten way to a strip. . . . We underrate the
automatism of ancient agriculture and of ancient government." l
However true may be this suggestion about the common
agriculture of the English Manor of the thirteenth century
and on this we offer no opinion it was, we think, certainly
not true of many an English Manor between 1689 and 1835.
By that time, at any rate, even the simplest three -course
system included some variety and choice among crops. More-
over, even the smallest Manor was divided into more than
three parts, 2 and these parts necessarily differed among them-
selves in their requirements. The actual operations to be
performed during the year at the various parts of the area of
the Manor, were, even in 1689, not very different in number
or diversity from those performed over the same area to-day.
We suggest, in fact, that the Manor had, somehow or another,
to arrive at nearly as many separate small decisions in the
tenants of the Manor were annually appointed at the Court as Bylaw-men,
commonly two for Hornsea Fields and two for Southorp. Their office was, among
other things, to look after the stocking of the pastures by the fanners and
owners of common rights ; and they also directed the employment of ' the Town's
ploitgh ' or ' Common plough ' " (An Account of Hornsea in Holderness in the
East Riding of Yorkshire, by E. W. B., 1847, p. 64).
1 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, p. 25.
2 This was the case even in earlier times. Thus, in the Manor of Forncett,
Norfolk, in the fourteenth century, " the rolls contain no clear indication that
there were within the vill three great fields. . . . 'Campi' are mentioned,
but they were numerous and small " (The Economic Development of a Norfolk
Manor, 1086-1565, by F. G. Davenport, 1906, p. 27).
7 8 THE COURT IN RUINS
course of the year as those which occupy the time and thought
of a modern farmer. It had to be settled each year which
seed wheat, barley, oats, rye, sainfoin, turnips, grass, clover,
rye-grass, " thetches " or peas * should be sown in each
of the numerous subdivisions of the great fields. The
dates at which these separate sections were to be opened and
closed to common pasture had to be fixed. There were
different kinds of common pasture to be arranged for in varying
proportions, according to the common needs sheepfolds in
such and such a field, up to such and such a date ; horses in
such and such a field ; the " cow common " to be in such and
such a place ; the " horse hitching " in another. In order to
keep the various parts of the land in good condition, the kind,
and still more the degree, of use to which they might be
severally put had each year to be determined with considerable
care, and portions set apart from time to time to be allowed
to lie a summer unused, in order that they might recover.
The various offences against the order of the Manor the
trespasses on each other's strips, the illicit use of the pasturage,
the straying of animals into the corn, neglecting fences, or
disobeying the orders as to the course or the dates of cultiva-
tion had all to be prosecuted and tried at the Court. 2 The
1 Even in the fourteenth century at least four crops were regularly cultivated
in England, and a choice had therefore to be made. ' ' The areas assigned to
the different kinds of crops varied somewhat from year to year " (ibid. p. 28).
2 We must own to being surprised at the paucity of the records of the actual
presentment and punishment of such predial offences. We imagine that the
village may have known how to compel obedience to the communal decisions by
sanctions less formal and less dilatory than the tardy amercement by the
Michaelmas Jury. But many examples can be found in the records of Manor
Courts if they are sought for. Thus the MS. rolls of the Court of the Manor
of Hitchin for 1470-71 record the presentment and amercement of persons for
allowing a hedge to grow on to a lane, ploughing up a greenway, encroaching
on a greenway, ploughing up a balk, and ploughing the end of a "Land" to
harm (Court Rolls in Public Record Office, portfolio 177, No. 40 ; an example
that we owe to the kindness of Mr. Seebohm). The rolls of the Court held at
Gnossall, Staffordshire, in the sixteenth century contain many references to
similar offences (The Manor mid Manorial Records, by N. J. Hone, 1905, pp.
188, 191, 192, 195, 198, 201). So, at Epworth, at the end of the seventeenth
and beginning of the eighteenth century we see the Court fining persons for
allowing their cattle to stray into the cornfield, for suffering their fences to
lie down, for keeping sheep in the cornfield after the date fixed for their removal,
and for riding over the cornfield (" Notes from the Court Rolls of the Manor of
Epworth," by C. Jackson, in the Rfliquary, vol. xxiii., 1883, pp. 44-48, 89-92,
174-175). In our subsequent account of the Manorial Borough of Godmanchester
we shall give other examples (p. 184).
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 79
common bull and boar had to be provided, and regulations
made for their use. 1 There were always gaps in the hedges
to be repaired, gates to be mended, paths and roads to be put
in order, ditches to be -scoured, and the walls of the pound to
be kept up. There might even be, as at Hornsea in the
East Riding of Yorkshire, the " town's plough " or " common
plough " to be looked after and managed. This, we are told,
" was an implement of great size, used for making deep furrows
in the fields for drainage ; and for this purpose, when the
ground was in a proper condition, the Bylaw-men, at their
discretion, called on the farmers for the requisite force for
managing the plough ; this was six or eight or more oxen (at
that time much used for draught), headed by two horses, with
several men and boys." 2 We shall, in subsequent chapters,
describe the large part that agricultural management of this
sort played in the business transacted by such a Manorial
Borough as Godmanchester, and by such a Municipal Corpora-
tion as Berwick-on-Tweed. Here we shall confine ourselves
to one leading instance of similar business performed, on no
inconsiderable scale, by the Court of the Manor.
The Manor of Great Tew in Oxfordshire, apparently co-
extensive with the Parish of the same name, distinguished in
history as the home and place of burial of Falkland, had,
during the eighteenth century, probably about as many
inhabitants as it has to-day, namely, between three and four
hundred. These three or four score of families were, nearly
all of them, engaged in and dependent on the cultivation of
the three thousand acres of the Manor. The management of
these agricultural operations nowadays performed individually
1 The provision of the Manor Bull and Boar is frequently made the subject
of presentments. In the Manor of Fulham the obligation was declared by the
Lord's Court to be on the Rector, in respect of his great tithea (Presentments of
1550 and 1680, in Fulham Old and New, by C. J. Feret, 1900, vol. ii. pp.
120-121). So it was in 1819 at Hitchin (English Village Community, by
F. Seebohm, 1883, pp. 443-453). The following is a common form of present-
ment in Manors of the South of England among the Court Leet business. " We
do present A. B. , being a tenant of the Lord of the Manor, shall keep a bull or a
boar for the tenants" (MS. Manor Rolls, l< Court of View of Frankpledge, "
Caddington, Essex, 22nd May 1713, among the archives of the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners). The custom is referred to in Shakespeare's Henry IV., Act ii,
scene 2, and in the last chapter of Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
2 This interesting survival continued, as one of the regular functions of the
Lord's Court, down to the local Inclosure Act of 1809 (An Account of Hornsca
in ffolderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire, by E. W. B., 1847, pp. 64-65).
So THE COURT IN RUINS
by the half a dozen capitalist farmers as exclusively private
concerns formed, it is clear, the principal part of the business
of the " Vis. Franc. Pledg. cum Cur. Baron, prehonorabilis
Antonii dni. vice comit. de Falkland dni. Manerii," held every
October. The presentments of the Jury of this Court, probably
a majority of all the owners of the strips of land to be
cultivated, give us a picture of the variety and intricacy of
the decisions which had to be come to even in the Court of a
tiny village. We see how numerous and complicated were
these decisions, even in a normal year, without any alteration
of the customary three years' course. But we are able to do
more than that. We may even see the little community
deciding, in 1*761, on the revolutionary step of changing from
a three to a nine years' course at a date, be it noted, when
many a capitalist farmer was still wedded to the old-fashioned
routine, 1 thus indicating that agricultural administration by
the Lord's Court was not necessarily so inefficient nor so
unprogressive as is sometimes supposed. We append extracts
from the Court rolls for the years 1692, 1756, 1759, and
1761 respectively. 2
Orders of 2lst April 1692
We do order to make a horse hich [hitching] 3 for this year,
and we do agree that it shall be from the Pool head up the pool
1 A similar agricultural revolution is recorded of the village of Hunmanby
in Yorkshire, some time prior to 1794. By unintelligent cultivation, the
commonfields had become "worn-out." At last the co-owners of the strips
were persuaded to adopt a six years' course of (1) turnips fed off by sheep, (2)
seeds, (3) seeds, (4) seeds, (5) wheat, (6) oats or pease. The grass seeds,
hurdles and nets, and wages of the shepherd were paid for, and the sheep
supplied, by the co-owners in proportion to their holdings. The Field-reeves
and Shepherd were appointed, regulations made, and the dates of the various
operations determined, we are told, at meetings of those concerned, which
may have been simply Courts of the Manor (General View of the Agriculture of
the East Riding of Yorkshire, by Isaac Leatham, 1794, pp. 45-46; The English
Peasantry, by Gilbert Slater, 1907, p. 88).
2 We are indebted for these interesting records to Mr. M. E. Boulton, the
present Lord of the Manor ; and (for those of the latter years) to Mr. Adolphus
Ballard, M.A., Town Clerk of Woodstock, and Clerk to the Oxford Board of
Guardians, author of Notes on the History of Chipping Norton, 1893 ; Chronicles
of the Royal Borough of Woodstock, 1896 ; The Domesday Boroughs, 1905 ;
The Domesday Inquest, 1907, etc. Mr. Ballard's stimulating researches lead us
to look forward with interest to further historical work from his pen.
3 For other uses of "hitching the fields," "hitchland," and "hatching
ground," see The English Peasantry, by Gilbert Slater, 1907, pp. 23-30, 76, 81.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 81
side to Hollo Lake, and up Hollo Lake to the upper side of
William Watson's . . . and so along the hade [head ?] way to the
end of William Keynold's headland end. And so it shall come
for[e]lands [?] on the home side of the wat[e]ry balke in Millslads,
and every Land into the great Pool the head shall go with the
land ; he that maketh default shall forfeit to the Lord of the Manor
for every default 1.
And we do further order that the aforesaid hichin[g] shall
be tide [tied ?] with horses and e[a]ten of [f] by or before the
17th day of Aug. next, and none to be mowed or cut or carried
away, . . .
We do order that the winter corn-field shall be from the horse
hi[t]ching all up the west side of Wood Way, all up to the up[p]er
side of Whete [Wheat ?] land.
We do order to keep ten sheep for a yard-land for this summer
common and no more ; the defaulter shall forfeit to the Lord of the
Manor 4d. for every sheep and 1 pen[n]y to the tellers for every
default.
We do order to keepe the cow common on the 1 4th day of
May and not before, and all the gaps in Down he[d]ge and ... to
be stopped sufficiently, every man his own gaps, by or befor the
same day.
We do order to keep but one horse for the yard-land and no
more, and there shall be no mare nor mares tide [tied] in the
common field. . . .
We do order that no man shall ti[e] his horse or horses in the
corn-field. . . .
We do order the sheep and folds to be reed [?] out of
the corn-field by or before the 22nd day of this instant
April. . . .
We do order that no man shall baite his horse or horses in
hollters [halters ?] or out of hollters in the field, nor no man shall
ti[e] his horse or horses on mowed ground till the horses hi[t]ching
be reede [?]. . . .
And every man shall ty [tie] his own ground till a quarter of
the field be reede [1] of the grain that it was laid for under the
same fine.
And we do order that no man letteth any Land on the Sainfoin
Hill to any out-town man, he or they, be them whom they will,
shall have no more power after he hath taken of[f] his own crope
to ty [tie] any horse or horses to bait any sort of catill [cattle] on
the said grounds. . . .
We do order that every man shall scour up his trench at Hollo
Lake by or before May day next, . . .
We do order that every man shall fence his own pe[a]se Lands
from Butcher's Row he[a]d to Wood-way Ford and from Bryer
VOL. II. PT. I r :
82 THE COURT IN RUINS
Lands ford to Tew Park corner, by or before the 7th day of May
next. . . .
We do order the jury to mete [meet] on the 22nd day of
this inst. April by 8 of the clock in the morning, at Preston
Pool Hill. . . .
We do order the Fieldsmen and empower them [to set] 8 horse
commons and no more, and they are to set to every husbandman
that hath most need one apiece, to the millers 4 apiece if - need be ;
3/ to be for every common.
Orders of 28th October 1756
It is ordered by the Jury that no person shall keep more than
eighteen sheep to the yardland this winter, and every person shall
brand his sheep or mark them on or before 21st of November next,
and to lay as many upon the turnips as they will, which shall not
be deemed any part of the eighteen above mentioned ; the defaulter
to pay three shillings and fourpence. 1
. . . that the cows shall break the hangings of Horse Hill in a
fortnight after the Cow Hill is broke, and in a week after the
hanging is broke to break the hanging of Chescomb Hill and the
top of Chescomb Hill, or as the Fieldsmen shall direct; and the
herd not to break without the Fieldsmen's direction, the defaulter
for every default to forfeit to the Lord of the Manor three shillings
and fourpence.
. . . that every Cow Common occupied by any person that has
not at least a quartern of land in his occupation shall be deemed a
Cottage Common, and every person that occupies more than a
quarter of a Yardland and occupies more than two Cows Common
[a] yardland, all that is over shall and is hereby deemed Cottage
Commons ; and it is ordered by the Jury that every Cottage
Common, or the owner or occupier thereof, shall pay (in lieu of
having the hanging of Horse Hill and the top and hanging of
Chescomb Hill laid to the Cow Common this next Summer) the
sum of five shillings, which money is hereby ordered to be paid to
the Fieldsmen on or before the twelfth day of May next ; and if
any cottager shall not be able to sell his Common for fourteen
shillings a common, the Fieldsmen, upon having notice thereof on
the day aforesaid, he shall be obliged to pay him or them after the
rate of nine shillings a Common at Gunpowder Treason 2 following,
1 The opening and closing formal words of each subsequent order are
omitted from the text for the sake of brevity. All the penalties for disobedience
were increased from three and fourpence in 1756 and 1759 to ten shillings
in 1761, the year of the revolution in the course of cultivation.
2 Meaning, of course, the 5th November.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 83
which money so raised by the five shillings on every Cottage
Common shall be laid out in scouring the darnings [1 dammings],
trenching the Cow Common, mending the rudaAvay [1 roadway],
and doing other good husbandry throughout the Field without
regard to one's man ground rather than another, which nine
shillings a Common is to be rated upon the cattle that are laid
upon the Common, share and share alike. . . .
. . . that no person that is to occupy lands in the Common
Field of Great Tew shall have liberty to sell Sheep Commons to
any person that does not occupy at least a quarter of a yardland in
the Common Field, but if they have any Commons to sell they are
to give notice to the Fieldsmen a week before Martinmas next, and
if the Fieldsmen can't sell them to people that occupy at least a
quarter of a yardland, the Commons are ordered to be paid for
after the rate of ninepence a Sheep Common, to be raised by a levy
the same as the Poor's Lev} 7 . 1 . . .
. . . that the sheep shall be hained off the young sainfoin all
this winter, and the Park Hill sainfoin at Martinmas next ; and the
Little Oxenden sainfoin [is] to lie to the Common till Mayday
next, and Chescomb Hill its hangings to lie to the Sheep Common
till Mayday next. . . .
. . . that the horses shall be hained out of the Commonfield
on or before the 31st day of December next. . . .
. . . that the Farr Hill shall be broke up this winter for
turnips, and that Upper Barnwell shall be winter ploughed and
sowed grass seeds with the spring grain to be sown thereon next
spring ; and that the Hayward or Fieldsmen shall pound all
manner of cattle off the turnips the same as if the Farr Hill was
cornfield. . . .
. . . that the horse hitchin [? hitching] shall be from Park
Hill to London Way on the Old Hill next to Galleythorns, one
Land to a yardland, and that the remainder of the Hill shall lie for
a summer fallow, and Oxenden sainfoin to be fed with sheep next
summer with it. . . .
. . . that between the hedges, being the clover quarter, shall
be hained from the sheep on or before the Martinmas next, and
from all manner of cattle on or before the 31st day of December,
and the gaps in the Millway hedge and Alice hedge to be stopped
by the owners on or before the 31st day of December next; and
every person to mound their own Landsends. . . .
. . . that the Jury meet on Preston Pool Hill on the 16th
November next by ten o'clock to do such matters between tenant
and tenant and Lord and tenant as shall be wanting. . . .
. . . that Priest Croft and the Leys shall be added to the Cow
1 Note the change from a levy per head of cattle, or per right of common
to a levy upon the annual value of each tenement.
84 THE COURT IN RUINS
Common for the year 1758, and the Northfields both to be laid to
the Cow Common the year 1759. . . .
The Jury appoints T. L. and W. L. to be Constables.
The Jury appoints G. L., J. B., T. L., and J. M. Fieldsmen for
the year ensuing.
The Jury appoints J. B. to be Hayward for the year ensu-
ing.
The Jury presents the death of T. S., Quaker, by which there
is a yardland and a half, and a small close called the Longgreen,
fallen to the Lord of the Manor.
The Jury presents that Widow F.'s lifehold tenement (is) going
to decay, and that she ought to repair the same.
Orders of 12nd October 1759
It is Ordered by the Jury to sow all Little Oxenden, the
Furlong called the Plank Pitts, Ten Lands over Oxenden Bottom
next to Woodway, and Eight Lands next to Woodway in Ellden
Stump furlong, pease the next spring, being in the year 1760, and
in the spring 1761 to sow the same with barley, and to lay the
same down with ryegrass and clover, the defaulter for every
default to forfeit to the Lord of the Manor three shillings and
fourpence. . . .
... to sow turnips upon Wheatland, Piked and Broad Castors,
Hollow Marsh Hill, and to Alepath, except the furlongs next to
Woodway, the next spring, being the year 1760, and in the spring
1761 to sow the same barley and lay it down with ryegrass and
clover. . . .
. . . that Wheatland, Piked and Broad Castors, and Hollow-
marsh Hill, and from Churchway to Alepath, to be hained from all
manner of cattle next summer on the 14th day next after Old
Midsummer. . . .
. . . that the Slad from the Brook by Woodway side up to
Hollow Marsh, and all the furlongs shooting into Woodway, includ-
ing Mr. Nevill's Hadland [? headland] at Hoare's Stone, and all the
furlongs above Chipping Norton way from Woodway to Rattock,
be sowed thetches for a horse hitchin [? hitching] this next spring,
and to be sowed wheat as soon as the thetches are tied off, and in
the spring 1761 to be sowed barley and laid down with grass
seeds. . . .
... to sow Lent grain the next spring on the furlong below
Chipping Norton Way and all the rest part of the Westfield, and in
the spring or summer 1761 to sow the same turnips, and to hain
the said turnips from all manner of cattle on the 14th day next
after Old Midsummer 1761,
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 85
. . . that the hangings of Horse Hill and the hangings of
Chescomb Hill be pastured by the cows this next summer 1760,
and that Forest Croft and the Leys be pastured by the cows in the
summer 1761, and that the two North fields be pastured by the
cows in the summer 1762. . . .
. . . that the Lands' ends on Chescomb Hill be mounded by
the owners of the Lands ; and gates to be hung on the road by the
Constables on or before the 16th day of November next. . . .
. . . that the Lands' ends on Horse Hill be mounded by the
owners of the Lands on or before a fortnight before Old Ladyday
next ; and that the gaps in Down Hedge against Horse Hill and
the Hollow way side be mounded by the owners at the same time ;
and that the gates be put up by the Constable by the same
time. . . .
. . . that all Park Hill, and all Oxenden (except what is
before ordered to be sowed pease), ryegrass and clover this next
spring. . . .
. . . that the occupiers of land in the Commonfield shall have
the liberty of laying as many sheep on their turnips as they will
carry, which said sheep are not to be deemed any part of the
sixteen above mentioned.
But in case of wet weather while the sheep are at turnips they
are to have the liberty of Great Oxenden and Little Oxenden
before it is sowed and nowhere else ; and no person that has sheep
at turnips that does not occupy at least a quarter of a yardland
shall have the liberty of coming upon either of the Oxendens in
wet weather. . . .
. . . that the folds be hained out of the winter Cornfields on
or before the 21st November next ; and no person shall turn upon
his neighbour's winter corn (except what is sowed amongst the
turnips on the turnip division) after the 21st of November. . . .
. . . that the horses shall be hained out of the Commonfield on
or before St. Thomas, Old Style, next. . . .
. . . that Farr Hill shall lie for a sheepwalk all next summer
and that three sheep to a Yardland may be laid on the Farr Hill
three weeks before May Day next, which three sheep shall be over
and above the sixteen sheep laid upon the Winter Common, for the
encouragement of them and an inducement to all occupiers of land
that sow turnips. . . .
. . . that the Old Hill shall be mowed for hay next summer,
and the sheep to have it afterwards till Martinmas then next
following, and no longer. . . .
. . . that the Old Hill and Galleythorns be hained from sheep
to-morrow, and all Park Hill from all manner of cattle and folds at
the same time. . . .
. . . that Churchway be mounded on both sides from Ayles-
86
hedge to Woodway, by the Yardland, on or before a month before
Martinmas. . . .
. . . that the gaps in Ayle.shedge be mounded by the Owners
on or before Ladyday next. . . .
It is Ordered by the Jury to mound the sainfoin from Wood-
stock Way to the Mill hedge, every Land's end by the owner of
the Land ; and where the furlong shoots up the brook, to be
mounded by the two outside hides ; and to mound the wheat at
Huckerswell, every one their own Land's ends ; and to mound the
barley from Cloncil Corner to Barn well Ford, every man his
Land's ends ; and the barley in Brook Furlong and Long Furlong
to be mounded by the two outside hides ; and the gaps to be
stopped in Millway hedge on or before Mayday. . . .
Orders of 23rd October 1761
It is Ordered by the Jury that Horse Hill be mounded by the
two outside hides and the owners of the Lands' ends, on or before
the 16th day of November next; the defaulter for every default to
forfeit to the Lord of the Manor ten shillings.
. . . that the grass seeds on Alepath Furlong, Hollowmarsh
Hill, Wheatland and Broad Castors and Picked Castors, Little
Oxenden, the Plank Pits, Eldenstump Furlong, and all Great
Oxenden and Park Hill be hained from the sheep on the 22nd day
of November next ; and the said grass seeds and the sainfoin to be
hained from all manner of cattle on the 21st day of December
next, the defaulter for every default to forfeit to the Lord of the
Manor ten shillings.
. . . that the Cow Common be hained from horses on the
21st day of December next, and the Cow Common and Chescomb
Hill to be hained from all manner of cattle on the 23rd day of
March next. . . .
. . . that the sheepfolds be hained out of the Cornfields on the
22nd of November next. . .
. . . that the horse hitchiri [? hitching] be in the Fallowfield
beginning at the side next Cuckoo's Holt, a yard to a Yardland ;
and that the horses shall not be hitched or tied on any other
part of the Commonfield till after it is mowed, except on the
highways. . . .
. . . that all Huckerswell be sowed turnips this next summer,
1762, and sowed barley with grass seeds, spring 1763 ; mowed for
hay, summer 1764; sheepwalk, 1765; oats, 1766; fallow, 1767;
wheat, 1768; pease, 1769. . . .
. . . that between the hedges shall be sowed turnips in
summer 1763, and every year after for eight years after the
manner of Huckerswell.
THE COURT OF THE MANOR 87
. . . that Upper Barnwell be sowed turnips, 1764, and every
year after for eight years after the manner of Huckerswell.
. . . that the Lower side of Woodstock way beyond the Brook
shall be sowed turnips, 1765, and every year after for eight years
after the manner of Huckerswell.
. . . that Galleythorns and the Old Hill be sowed turnips,
1766, and every year after for eight years after the manner of
Huckerswell.
. . . that Park Hill and Great Oxenden be sowed turnips,
1767, and every year after for eight years after the manner of
Huckerswell.
. . . that Upper Oxenden, Plankpits, and Ten Lands next
Woodway, in both Eldenstump Furlong and over Oxenden Bottom
and Wheatland and Broad and Picked Castors and Hollowmarsh
Hill to Alepath be sowed turnips, 1768, and every year after for
eight years after the manner of Huckerswell.
. . . that from Alepath to the Great Pool be sowed turnips,
1769, and every year after for eight years after the manner of
Huckerswell.
. . . that the Westfield from Alepath and Woodwayford be
sowed barley or oats next spring, and ryegrass and clover ; that it
shall be mowed for hay, 1763; sheepwalk, 1764; oats, 1765; fallow,
1766; wheat, 1767; and pease, 1768. . . .
. . . that the grass seeds at Great Oxenden and Park Hill
shall be broke for the sheep at Old Ladyday next and not
before. . . .
. . . that all the grass seeds sowed last spring shall be mowed
for and hay to Park Hill; and Great Oxenden to be sheepwalk,
and all the grass seeds besides after they are mowed, except
Chescomb Hill. . . .
. . . that the Hay ward shall pound all horses, pigs, hogs, etc.,
that are found grassing about the waste in the town.
The Jury elect S. D. Hayward, and agree to pay him two
shillings a yardland ; and he is to keep the crows from off the
wheat immediately that the wheat is out of danger ; and to keep
the crows five weeks before harvest from off the wheat till reaping
time; and' to keep the Field free from moles and wants, 1 and is to
employ his whole time in doing the said duty.
This vivid picture of the administration of commonfield
agriculture by the Lord's Court raises some interesting
questions. How did the twelve or fifteen members of the
Jury of Great Tew manage to formulate all these com-
plicated orders ? We learn from contemporary letters that
1 I.e. hedgehogs.
88 THE COURT IN RUINS
their discussions were prolonged and tempestuous. In 1755
the Court had actually to be adjourned because these " fathers
of the hamlet " could not arrive at an agreement by nightfall.
When the spring came round there arose " a great demur
amongst the town's people about some of them trespassing
the last Court Order " ; and the local representative of the
Steward was obliged to send to him for the original document,
or a copy of it, "for the Fieldsmen," who were to enforce it.
In October the Lord of the Manor himself writes to his solicitor :
" I am afraid I must trouble you to come and hold a Court
here, though I doubt 'tis probable we shall be obliged to
adjourn again as we did last year on account of squabbles."
Within five years, as we have seen, the reformers got their
way, and made the great revolution of adopting a nine years'
course. That this did not do away with argument and
discussion, we may realise from the fact that in 1763 the
Lord of the Manor reports that they " could not finish the
business of the Court till near ten this evening." ]
The problem remains why we possess so little record of
the agricultural decisions of the Lord's Court, which must,
in thousands of Manors, have been formulating orders
analogous to those of Great Tew. In Manor after Manor
we find the books of records kept by the Stewards between
1689 and 1835 giving attention to little else than the
admissions of new tenants, the surrenders of copyholds, and
other conveyancing business. There is a growing attenuation
of the record. Sometimes the appointment of officers is
recorded, sometimes not. The presentments of nuisances die
away. The pleas in debt and trespass, with the verdicts arrived
at, are often not entered at all, or entered in a separate book.
When, as at Great Tew, the Jury had long and elaborate
presentments, they prepared these on separate sheets of
paper, which they delivered, as we are elsewhere expressly
told, " to the Steward to enter in the Court rolls." 2 It is
plain that the Steward, who was not interested in the tenants'
agricultural operations, omitted the very heavy task of copying
1 MS. Letters from Great Tew to Edward Ryves of Woodstock, 9th April and
23rd October 1756 and 28th October 1763 ; in the possession of Mr. Ballard.
2 Treatise, on Copyholds, by C. "VVatkius, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 383.
The interesting presentments of the Jury of Great Tew are written on large sheets
of paper, those of each year being entirely distinct from those of other years.
THE BAM BURGH COURTS 89
these lengthy presentments into his book ; and the loose sheets,
like the corresponding loose papers of the Vestry, the Municipal
Corporation, and the Court of Quarter Sessions, have been far
less perfectly preserved, and even less carefully looked for,
than the bound volumes. 1
We might leave at this point our account of the Court
of the Manor, content with the foregoing generalised descrip-
tion of its constitution and procedure. But, to give greater
actuality to our survey, we take from our collection half a
dozen specimens for individual description. In these Manors
the Courts will be seen to range from a wholly undifferentiated
tribunal transacting all kinds of business, through Courts
calling themselves by composite names, but transacting only
one kind of business, up to Courts which correspond, in their
duality, closely with the lawyers' view of what the Lord's
Court ought to be. Whether this duality had always existed,
or whether it was merely the product of a disintegration of
function, we leave to the judgment of the historian.
(i.) The Ba/niburgh Courts
It has been observed that, in more than one respect, the
County of Northumberland has, in the past, been a century
or two later in constitutional development than the more
settled parts of the South of England. Accordingly, it is to
Northumberland that we turn for the best examples of
Manorial Courts continuing in full and unrestricted activity
throughout the eighteenth century. Along the six miles
of wild rocks and sandhills from Budle Point to Beadnell Bay
the little fishing villages and scattered agricultural hamlets
were under the dominion of the Lord of the Castle of
Bamburgh, 2 that rises to this day so picturesquely on its black
rock from amid the sweeping stretches of sparkling white
sand. Here we find a particularly full and varied Manorial
1 For another instance, at Laxton (Notts), see The English Peasantry, by
Gilbert Slater, 1907, ch. ii.
2 In 1704 the Bamburgh Manors, which had belonged to the Forsters, were
acquired by Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and were on his death in 1720
left in trust for charitable purposes. We are indebted to the existing trustees,
and to Mr. W. T. Hinclmarsh of Alnwick, for access to the MS. records from
1695, See also the History of Northumberland, by E. Bateson, vol. i. (1893),
in which some extracts are given (pp. 1G9-172).
90 THE COURT IN RUINS
jurisdiction extending throughout the whole of the period
under our consideration. In the hall of the ancient castle
two Courts were regularly held, the View of Frankpledge and
Court Baron of the Manor of the Castle, with jurisdiction
extending over the whole of the great Manor of about fifty
square miles ; and the Court of the Manor of the " Borough "
of Bamburgh itself, governing the little village that clustered
round the fortress. The Court of the Manor of the Castle
claimed, in 1689, the attendance of some two hundred suitors
of various grades. There were, first of all, the free tenants
of the Manor great personages residing in Scotland and the
South of England, who held lands of the Lord of Bamburgh,
and who, between 1689 and 1835, were regularly summoned
at his Courts, and as regularly " essoined." The real attend-
ants at these Courts were the more assiduous or the more
dependent of the eight or nine score of " Freeholders," " Copy-
holders," " Leaseholders," and " Cottagers " of the " demesnes "
of Bamburgh and North Sunderland, and of the three vills
or townships of Beaduell, Shoreston, and North Sunderland,
together with the " Resiants in Bamburgh Castle " itself, all
of whom are elaborately recited in the records. At this Court,
which was held only once a year (with frequent omissions
in the years between 1695 and 1774) all kinds of business
was transacted. Constables, Pounders, and Ale-tasters were
appointed for each of the three constituent townships. Minor
offences principally trespasses by animals in the common-
fields, nuisances, assaults, and affrays were presented and
amerced. The townships themselves were amerced for non-
repair of pinfolds and stocks. 1 New copyholders were admitted
and successions to property registered. Occasional orders
were made as to the management of the common pasture, the
particular fields in which horses were to be tethered, the
repair of the " headland," 2 and the obnoxious habits of some
of the inhabitants of Beadnell, who had started extracting fish
oil in the streets. 3 But the principal business of the Court
1 MS. Court Rolls, Manor of the Castle of Bamburgh, 1707, etc.
2 Ibid. 1st October 1705.
8 "Ordered that none of the inhabitants of Beaduell shall boil or extract
oil out of fish in the town streets, or within the houses there, the same being
not only noxious and offensive, but also dangerous to the neighbourhood "
(ibid. 22nd April 1719).
THE BAM BURGH COURTS 91
was the trial of civil actions between inhabitants of the
Manor for debts or damages not exceeding 39s. lid. In the
earlier years of the eighteenth century there was always an
array of such actions to be dealt with at every Court. It
was, indeed, a serious offence in any inhabitant to bring before
any other tribunal, whether civil or criminal, any matter
which could be dealt with at the Court of the Manor. In
1705, for instance, we find two of the tenants fined 39s. lid.
each, one for getting the other arrested on a writ issued
by the King's Court at Westminster, and the other for
indicting his adversary at Quarter Sessions. 1 Eight down
to the middle of the nineteenth century this Manorial juris-
diction in civil actions and petty offences was maintained and
continued ; though we note the stream of cases getting
gradually smaller, and all attempt at enforcing an exclusive
jurisdiction is abandoned. 2
The whole of the business of this Court seems to have
been transacted by the dozen or so of jurymen summoned by
command of the Steward. Down to 1707 there was one
Jury only, described as the " Jury of Inquiry and of Trial
of Actions." From 1707 onward we find in the records
always two Juries sworn, a " Jury of Inquiry " and a " Jury
for the Trial of Causes." But the two Juries were, in fact,
the same persons, though the names usually occur in different
orders. 3 It is to be noted that the differentiation of the
1 "Upon the oath of T. H. we present the said H. J. for causing T. H. to
be indicted at the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the county,
whereas if he had any cause of action or complaint against the said T. H. the
same might have been redressed and punished in this Court ; for which he is
amerced 39s. lid. Upon oath of H. J. we present T. H. for causing the said
H. J. to be arrested upon a writ out of some of the Courts at Westminster at
the said T. H.'s suit; whereas the cause of action being under 39s. lid. . . .
and therefore cognisable in this Court, he might have had redress in this
Court ; we do therefore amerce him 39s. lid." (ibid. 1st October 1705).
2 The Court appears to have been held usually once a year, even for civil
suits ; but half-yearly meetings occasionally occur, and even (as between 1779
and 1786) other meetings. It was assumed in 1839 that it had the right to
three-weekly sessions, but was then, in fact, held only once a year, with an
average of only one or two cases (House of Commons Return of Courts of
Request, 1840, p. 114).
3 We suspect that the Jury was appointed to serve for the year. A possible
cause of the nominal differentiation between its two main functions of present-
ment and of trial is suggested by an entry of 1748. "In the cause between
Mills and Taylor, A. A. sworn on 'Jury instead of George Taylor" (MS.
Court Rolls, Manor of Bamburgh, 6th July 1748). It was obviously convenient
92 THE COURT IN RUINS
Jury into two Juries bore no resemblance to the lawyers'
distinction between the Homage of the Court Baron and the
Jury of the Court Leet. At Bamburgh the Jury of Inquiry
continued to act both as the Homage of the Lord and the
Jury for the King; admitting new copyholders, regulating
the commons, appointing Constables, and presenting public
nuisances. The second Jury was, as its name implies,
restricted to the trial of " plaints and pleas " between parties. 1
We pass now to the Manor of the Borough of Bamburgh,
for which the same Steward, assisted by the same Bailiff, held
entirely separate Courts. Here again we have the elaborate
array of classes of persons owing suit and service Free
Suitors, Freeholders, Cottagers, Leaseholders, and " Farmers,"
whatever may be meant by this term. 2 But the Court is,
down to 1719, termed, in its records, a Court Baron only;
and we do not feel sure whether (as we shall subsequently
describe in the case of Alresford) the Lord had not retained
the View of Frankpledge and Court Leet when granting to
the " Borough of Bamburgh " the privilege of a separate Court.
The " Borough of Bamburgh " had had, indeed, a long and
eventful history. For more than two hundred years it had
ranked as a " Free Borough," even receiving Royal Charters
and sending members to Parliament. But it was practically
destroyed in the Scotch wars of the fifteenth century ; and it
seems then to have reverted to a position of Manorial subordina-
tion, retaining of its former status nothing more than the
to be able to omit from the Jury for the Trial of Actions persons interested in a
particular suit, without necessarily omitting them from the Jury of Inquiry.
1 It is to be noted that there are (as we have seen in the Courts at Hitchin
and elsewhere) distinct signs that the Stewards latterly tried to make their
Courts what the lawyers were saying that they ought to be. Thus, from 1779,
we find the Jury which does all the main business termed the Jury for our
Lord the King, and the Jury which tries actions only is termed the Homage
Jury for the Trial of Causes (ibid. June and October 1779).
It is interesting to find that in the Manor of Blanchland, also belonging
to the Crewe Trustees, where the Courts were held by the same Steward as those
of Bamburgh, we find practically the same terms used. There is the same
recital of Freeholders, Leaseholders, and Cottagers, as liable to suit and service ;
and the same "Jury of Inquiry and for Trial of Causes." But in this remote
rural Manor there were, from 1785 at any rate, no "causes," and very few
presentments of nuisances, so that the holding of the Court was discontinued
after 1812, in spite of an urgent petition from the inhabitants (MS. Court Rolls,
Manor of Blanchland, 1785-1812).
2 We did not notice any explicit mention of Copyholders, so that it is possible
that " Farmers" here mean "customary tenants " by copy of Court Roll.
THE HAMBURG H COURTS 93
name of Borough, and the separation of its Court from that of
the rest of the Manor. 1 In its decay the Manor of the Borough
passed to the Priory of Nostell in Yorkshire ; which acquired
also the two neighbouring townships of Elford and Fleethani,
and apparently added them to the jurisdiction of the Borough
Court. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the owner-
ship of the Manor of the Borough was reunited with that of
the Manor of the Castle, and presently we find the Steward,
who held both Courts, giving them both the same title of View
of Frankpledge and Court Baron. 2 Both dealt, in fact, with
the same heterogeneous kinds of business, though in differing
proportions. The Court of the Borough, like that of the
Castle, actually empanelled only one set of jurymen for all
its business; and this remained as a single Jury until 1727,
when it became nominally differentiated into a Jury "ad
inquirendum " and a Jury " per treatione causae " (sic), but
nevertheless consisted always of the same twelve or thirteen
persons. The Court of the Borough had, however, its own
distinctive character, both in function and in structure.
It formally admitted new tenants to the " burgageship " of the
Manor of the Borough. It had far more presentments of
nuisances than the Court of the Castle, and these nuisances
were rather more distinctively urban in their character. It
dealt with weights and measures, with the mutual obligations
of millers and their customers, and with the clearing of the
lanes from loose stones. 3 ' It had to make a large number of
regulations for the use of the " Burrow Yards " (or Borough
Yardlands, commonfields under plough), as well as for stinting
the common pastures. 4 What is, however, still more distinctive
1 For Bamburgh as a Borough see History of Northumfierlaiid, by E. Bateson,
1893, vol. i. pp. 114-148. It is mentioned as a Borough in 1197 ; it received
Royal Charters in 1255, 1321, 1332, 1382, and 1405; it was represented
in the Parliament of 1295 ; and it was destroyed between 1419 and 1439.
Its population probably at no time exceeded a few hundreds, but it was divided
into four Wards, and elected four Bailiffs.
2 MS. Court Rolls, Manor of the Borough of Bamburgh, 1719, etc.
3 " Ordered that the several occupiers of the lands and grounds of Bamburgh
shall, upon notice from the Constables, assist to clear the lanes of stones and
molehills" (ibid. 23rd April 1719). "Every person within this Manor shall
grind at the mill they are accustomed to. ... The miller shall wait on his
customers to carry the grist to his mill and back again within forty eight hours'
warning" (ibid. 4th May 1731).
4 "None of the inhabitants of Bamburgh shall for the future put any of
their cattle to feed in any of the Burrow Yards (? Borough Yardlands) until ajl
94 THE COURT IN RUINS
is the fact that, throughout the whole proceedings, we are
conscious of the " Freeholders of the Borough " in the back-
ground, as constituting a standing part of the government,
with functions of their own. We have no records of the
meetings of these Freeholders we have not even any such
reports from them brought into Court as those presented by
the Jury of the Manor of Great Tew but we learn something
about them from the records of the Court itself. We must, of
course, visualise them, not as the owners of freehold houses in
a crowded city, 1 but as the owners of scattered strips of arable
land in the " Borough yards," or common-fields, with rights of
common pasturage. In 1 705 we find them entering into a
Corporate agreement with the Lord, duly ratified and recorded
at the next Court, as to their " free liberty " to depasture on
the Town Moor, to have " the eatage " of certain fields, and to
drive their cattle in summer on the seashore, whilst, if the
weather is very bad, they are to be free to use also the Castle
demesne ground. 2 We see them authorised by the Court to
make " a general rate or assessment " on themselves, in order
to raise a sufficient sum to make 'good the fences ; and to
collect the said rate or tax by one of themselves. 3 We even
find them on one occasion directed to decide upon and, by a
mere majority vote, to assess upon all the inhabitants of the
Borough, for repairing and cleansing the well, a compulsory
rate or tax, which the Court will enforce by distraint. 4 The
the corn groAving thereon shall be led in " (ibid. 9th September 1760). ' ' No stints
of horses shall be kept for sheep, nor sheep for horses, and the stinting Day is to
be 10th of May yearly " (ibid. 9th September 1760). " It is also ordered that the
several rabbit cuts in the said moor ought to be filled up at the end of every
hunting (i.e. shooting) season to prevent all mischiefs by the horses or cattle
falling therein" (ibid. 23rd May 1775). "The several holds in the said moor
which have been made for the purpose of burning for kelp ought to be filled up
at the end of every burning season, and the stones surrounding the same to be
removed" (ibid. 23rd May 1775).
1 We do, however, read that " no person living out of freehold mansion-house
shall keep any horses upon Hamburgh Commons" (ibid. 13th October 1722).
2 Ibid. 2nd October 1705. 3 Ibid. October 1790 ; also 1794.
4 " It is at this Court, by and with the consent of the Jury, thought fit and
ordered that the Freeholders of the Town of Bamburgh do, some time before the
next Court, . . . agree upon and lay an assessment upon every inhabitant or
householder . . . for and towards the repairing and cleansing the Kiln Well,
as to the said Freeholders, or major part of them, shall seem fit and expedient."
Any one refusing to pay was to forfeit one and eightpence, to be levied by distraint
(ibid. 16th October 1696). On the other hand,- the way to the well Avas
ordered to be repaired, not by a tax, but by the tenants of the adjoining lands
(ibid. 15th October 1699).
THE HAMBURGH COURTS . 95
existence in the fourteenth century of a chartered Borough of
Bamburgh makes it probable that the rights and privileges of
the Freeholders of this Manor were but the remnants of a
decayed autonomy. But for this historical probability, we
might almost have seen in them the nascent germ of what, in
other circumstances, developed into such Manorial Boroughs as
Alnwick or Arundel, presently to be described. 1
1 The records of the " Court of View of Frankpledge with Court Baron" of
the Manor of Tweedmouth and Spittal, between 1658 and 1663, with far less
full minutes down to 1819, offer an exceptionally clear view of an Undifferentiated
Court. This Manor, lying opposite the Borough of Berwick-on-Tweed, was
purchased for 570 by the Municipal Corporation in 1652-1657, in order that
the latter might be able to clear out ' ' the numerous company of disorderly,
uncivil, and lawless persons, principally Scotswomen of evil fame," who were
harboured there. The MS. records of the Courts that continued to be held by
the Corporate Lord of the Manor show the extreme heterogeneity of the business.
The fifteen Jurymen who were invariably sworn at each six-monthly Court dealt
indiscriminately, in their presentments, with the appointment of Constables
and the amercement of nuisance-mongers, with actions for debt and the punish-
ment of "a blood and affray," with the lack of a Pound and the admission of
new copyhold tenants of the Manor, with defective weights and measures and the
defaults of tenants in keeping their ditches scoured, with the harbouring of
"inmates " and the keeping of ducks and geese " to abuse the water," with the
grant of a portion of the waste and the ordering of the strangers to find security
that they will not become chargeable, with prohibitions of the boiling of salmon
in the village itself and the method by which "the assessment that was gathered
for repairing the highways" (1663) was to be accounted for by the Bailiffs.
The entries show that the Court passed higgledy-piggledy from one kind of
business to the other, whether it was the presentment of a nuisance, the admission
of a new copyholder, the appointment of a Constable, the verdict in an action
on the case between two inhabitants, or the punishment of a common scold.
But there are variations in the record. From 1658 to 1663 there are numerous
and extremely heterogeneous entries in English, including many civil actions.
From 1663 to 1732 the entries are in Latin, and relate exclusively to the property
business of the Manor. We see no reason to suppose that the busy local tribunal
came suddenly to an end, and we suspect that the presentments of the Jury
(as at Great Tew) were written on separate loose sheets, which a new Steward
neglected to copy into his book. From 1732 to 1764 the entries are in English,
but still exclusively relating to conveyancing, etc. Between 1764 and 1771,
whilst admissions and conveyances, etc., are recorded as by "the Homage"
evidently a new Steward had learnt that this was the legal formula there are a
certain number of " presentments of the Jury," and "orders of the Court,"
relating to the appointment of Constables, nuisances, and weights and measures,
which the Jury went round to inspect. After 1771, again, we have nothing but
conveyances recorded. The Steward makes no entry in this book of the findings
of the Jury in civil suits. Yet we know that this very Court, which determined
dozens of civil actions in the seventeenth century, was still determining them in
the nineteenth century, and had doubtless been doing so continuously. Over
200 summonses were taken out in 1839, over 100 cases heard, and half a dozen
judgments enforced by execution against property (House of Commons Return
of Courts of Request, 1840, p. 125).
96 THE CO UR T IN R UINS
(ii.) The Court Leet of the Savoy
In contrast with the little fishing ports of Northumberland
stands the so-called Precinct of the Savoy, in 1689 a tiny
scrap of densely populated, extra-parochial territory around the
ancient palace, prison, and chapel of the Savoy in Westminster.
Here the Manorial rights have continued to belong to the
Crown, in respect of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Lord's
Court to be regarded, apparently, as exercising only Court
Leet functions has been held uninterruptedly for at least
five centuries down to the present day. 1 Every year during
the past five centuries the Steward, as of old, has held this
ancient Court, the Bailiff formally notifying the residents to
attend, and expressly summoning about a score of them to
serve on the Jury. At the end of the seventeenth century,
and (as the records show) throughout the eighteenth century,
the Court was an effective local governing authority in the
absence of any effective Vestry, the only authority for the
Precinct, other than the much- occupied Middlesex Quarter
Sessions. 2 At the sessions of this Court were appointed the
four Burgesses and the four Assistant Burgesses, each serving
for life, a number to which the Precinct was entitled under
the Act of 1585, in imitation of the constitution of the Court
of Burgesses for Westminster. The Court also appointed
annually from among the respectable householders four
Constables, four Aleconners, and two Flesh-tasters, who were
1 The early records of this Court, mentioned as held in 1399, have dis-
appeared, but the proceedings between 1682 and 1789 are summarised in
precise detail in the Digest of the Proceedings of the Court Leet of the Manor and
Liberty of the Savoy, which Joseph Ritson, the learned antiquary, who was then
the Steward, published in 1789. For its work since that date there is its great
bound volume of current records, "The Court Book of the Manor and Liberty
of the Savoy," for access to which (and much information) we are indebted to
the courtesy of Mr. G. R. Askwith, the present Steward.
2 The Precinct of the Savoy, as an extra- parochial place, had apparently for
a long time no parish officers. We hear of a sort of Select Vestry in 1635 and
1732 (see Vol. I. The Parish and the County, p. 186), which may not have con-
tinued in authority. The inhabitants held annual meetings to choose Trustees
for regulating the Nightly Watch under 14 George III. c. 90 (1774). A body of
Paving Commissioners, similarly elected, was established by 5 and 6 William IV.
c. 18 (1835). When at last the Precinct was required in 1855 to take rank
among the Parishes of Westminster for the election of a member of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, the election was also made at the mooting of
ratepayers, which had by this time assumed to be an open Vestry,
THE COURT LEET OF THE SAVOY 97
required to serve their year of office, and severely fined in
default. 1 These officers were required severally to make their
presentments of nuisances and defaults to the next Court,
when the Jury did not fail to inflict substantial fines on
the offenders. Shopkeepers using fraudulent weights and
measures, 2 residents keeping houses of ill-fame, 3 traders ob-
structing the streets by leaving timber, casks, or packing-cases
about, or stopping up the footway by ladders ; 4 owners allowing
their premises to become structurally unsafe ; soap-boilers
conveying offensive soaplees along the Strand ; 5 the Keeper
of the Savoy Prison for ill-treating the military prisoners
detained there 6 even the proprietor of Exeter Change for
" keeping a tiger carelessly secured in a shed on Savoy Hill
to the great alarm of the neighbours " 7 found themselves
reprimanded, warned, and smartly fined for their delinquencies.
During the eighteenth century the " Commissioners of the
Pavement " and the " Commissioners of Sewers," both statutory
authorities for the City of Westminster, were repeatedly pre-
sented for their neglect. The condition of the "Strand
Bridge," of " Strand Lane Stairs," of " Essex Stairs," and of
" Surrey Stairs " was perpetually exercising the minds of the
Jury. 8 Nor did the Court lack its paid professional officers.
Besides the Bailiff, whose remuneration lay in his fees, there
was an Upper Beadle and an Under Beadle, each with a
gorgeous staff of office, and (in 1795) an Assistant Constable.
Year after year the proceedings go on, in the nineteenth
century growing steadily more perfunctory. The advent of
the new police in 1829 evidently accelerates the process of
decay. In 1861 the Court petitions Parliament to be in-
cluded, like the City of Westminster, in the abolition of the
1 As lately as 1791 an inhabitant was summarily fined 7 for refusing to
serve as Constable (MS. Records, Savoy Court, 1791).
2 "Upon the return of the Aleconners, they present Mr. F., Cheesemonger,
in Butcher Row, for having scales which they found deficient, and do amerce
him in the sum of forty shillings " (MS. Records, Savoy Court, 1785). Similarly
a baker, " for breaking the Assize of Bread," is fined forty shillings (ibid. 1792).
3 Ibid. 1809 (very frequently also between 1682 and 1789).
* Ibid. 1795.
6 Ibid. 1796, 1797, 1807, 1809, 1810 (30 fine).
6 1795 and 1798; in 1810 the Jury visited the prison and found "all well"
(ibid).
t Ibid. 1798.
8 Digest of the Proceedings of the Cowrt Leet of the Manor and Liberty of the
Savoy, by J. Ritson, 1789.
VOL. II. PT. I H
98 THE COURT IN RUINS
"Annoyance Jury." After this date the officers' presentments
cease, and the proceedings become formal only, though fines
continued to be nominally inflicted on keepers of houses of
ill-fame (as a method of driving them out of the Precinct)
down to 1880. The Court still (1907) continues to be held,
with elaborate ceremony, the Steward formally " charging "
the Jury, and insisting on its attendance. The proceedings,
however, are confined to a punctilious maintenance of ancient
boundary marks, and the five -centuries -old "Court of the
Steward, Bailiff', and Burgesses of the Manor and Liberty of
the Savoy," fully alive and active in 1807, lingers in 1907
only as a shadow of the past. 1
1 We may mention another extra-parochial place in the Metropolis, governed,
apparently, by a Lord's Court. The Tower of London has, time out of mind,
been the nucleus of a "Liberty," or area exempted from some or all of the
jurisdiction of the County. According to a statute of 1663 this Liberty of
"the Tower Hamlets" included no fewer than twenty-one places, comprising
Shoreditch, Hackney, and the whole eastern part of Middlesex, within which
were many separate Manors. These were, at any rate for militia purposes, under
the Constable of the Tower, who acted in many ways as Gustos Rotulorum and
Lord-Lieutenant. Whether anything in the nature of a Hundred Court was
ever held we cannot tell ; but Courts of Quarter Sessions were regularly held in
the Tower itself until the reign of James II., when they were removed, as the
concourse of people within the fortress was deemed unsafe. Meanwhile a Court
was being held in the Tower, exercising Leet jurisdiction over the "Liberties"
of the Tower in a narrower sense, extending, in fact, only to "the circumference
without the Tower" and to extra -parochial places close by, such as Little
Minories, Old Artillery Ground, and Wellclose Square. We hear in the sixteenth
century of the presentments of "Her Majesty's Inquest of the Tower." Those
of the "Leet Jury" for 1679 are preserved. The official orders and Letters
Patent of James II. expressly mention this Court Leet of the Tower, and con-
firm the immunity of the "Liberties" from the authorities of the Cities of
London and Westminster. Whether this Court of the " Precinct " of the Tower,
as this adjacent " Liberty " came to be called, in any way represented a shrunken
Court for the whole of the Tower Hamlets, superior to the Courts of the Manors
within them, we cannot ascertain. Even as the Court Leet of the Precinct, it
apparently faded away early in the eighteenth century. From an interesting
petition of 16th February 1727 (preserved in War Office Ordnance Records,
Misc. No. 1, Entry Book re Tower Liberty, in Public Record Office), we gather
that the Court was held under the Steward of the Constable of the Tower, and
that the Jury presented persons to serve as officers of the Precinct, including,
since 1601, two Overseers of the Poor, who accounted regularly to the Court.
The Court disposed of various funds, including fees paid by publicans for
licences ; the rent of a shed on Tower Hill built by the Court itself, and of
another on Tower Wharf; "the disposal of the Bulwark Bar" (apparently a
toll) ; fines imposed for oaths ; fees on burials at the chapel of the Tower ; fees
on licences to watermen to work the Tower ferries on Sundays ; voluntary con-
tributions at the Chapel, and otherwise ; and, finally, a rate levied on the
inhabitants of Tower Hill. With these revenues the Court relieved the poor
and administered the government of the Precinct. Latterly, however, by the
neglect of Governors and of the Court, " the late Gentleman Porter" has
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 99
(iii.) The Court Leet and Court Baron of Manchester
The Manor of Manchester affords an example of a Lord's
Court continuing to serve as an active local governing authority
for a vast population and one of the greatest of English
provincial towns, 'not merely between 1689 and 1835, but
right down to 1846, under conditions very different from
those of the rural fishing villages of Bamburgh, and even from
those of the Precinct of the Savoy. 1
The first point that we notice is that at Manchester there
appropriated the income of the Bulwark Bar, and some of the other revenues
have been left unclaimed, with the result that the rate on the inhabitants has
been increased. The military authorities are therefore requested to restore the
privileges of the Court Leet. We have been unable to trace any of the records
of this Court or to find out when it actually ceased to be held (see The Survey
of London, by John Stow, vol. i. p. 77, of Strype's edition of 1720 ; History and
Antiquities of the Tower of London, by John Bayley, vol. ii. pp. 654-670, and
Appendix, pp. 112 and 121 of 1st edition only, 1825).
1 Owing to the public-spirited action of the Manchester Town Council the
records of this Court from 1552 to 1846 have been printed in full (see The
Cowrt Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, in twelve volumes, edited, with
notes and introduction to each volume, by J. P. Earwaker, 1884-1890). Extracts
from these rolls had already been edited by John Harland in two volumes of
the Chetham Society's publications (1864 and 1865). The Town Council has
also published The Constables' Accounts of the Manor of Manchester (1612-1776),
three vols., edited by J. P. Earwaker, 1891-1892. For the early history of
the Manor see the scholarly treatise by Professor James Tait, Mediaeval Manchester
and the Beginnings of Lancashire, 1904 ; which does not, however, clear up the
complicated relationship between the Hundred and the Manor, the Manor and
the Parish, and the Parish and the Townships. Something is to be gathered
on these points from Chapters from the Early History of the Barony, Lordship,
Vill, etc., of Manchester, by J. Harland, 1861-1862 (vols. 53, 56, and 58 of the
Chetham Society); the article on "The Feudal Baronage," by W. Farrer, in
the Victoria County History of Lancashire, vol. i., 1906 ; and from the series
of histories of the several chapelries in course of publication by the Chetham
Society, viz. those of Denton, by J. Booker (vol. 37) ; Didsbury and Chorlton,
by J. Booker, 1857 (vol. 42); Stretford, by H. T. Crofton, 1899-1903 (vols.
N.S. 42, 45, and 51); Birch, by J. Booker, 1857 (vol. 47); and Newton, by
H. T. Crofton, 1904-5 (vols. 52-55), for some of which references we are indebted
to Dr. W. E. Axon. See also Didsbury, Sketches, Reminiscences, and Legends, by
Fletcher Moss, 1890. For incidental references to the Manorial Court, see the
account of the customs enrolled in 1623 (History of Boroughs, by H. A. Merewether
and A. J. Stephens, 1835, vol. i. pp. 541-545) ; A Picture of Manchester, by Joseph
Aston, 1816, pp. 27-30, 168 ; An Essay on English Municipal History, by
James Thompson, 1867, ch. xiv ; Manchester Guardian, 18th October 1817,
4th May and 19th October 1833, 12th October 1836, 25th October 1837,
13th January and 10th February 1838 ; Manchester Courier, 15th October 1836 ;
and the case of Rutter v. Chapman, 1839. The close of its history is described
in the introduction to vol. xii. of The Court Leet Records of the Manor of
Manchester, by J. P. Earwaker, 1890 ; Alderman Cobden, by Sir E. W. Watkin,
1891 ; Cobden as a Manchester Citizen, by W. E. A. Axon, 1904.
loo THE COURT IN RUINS
was, at any rate in the nineteenth century, not one Lord's Court,
but a pair of Courts two separate and distinct tribunals, held
in different places, at different times, by different officers of the
Lord of the Manor, served by different staffs of subordinates,
and preserving entirely distinct records. There was the
" Court Baron of the Manor of Manchester," a " Three Weeks'
Court," of which the functions seem to have been confined to
the trial of civil actions under forty shillings. 1 There was the
"Court Leet and View of Fraiikpledge held in and for the
Manor of Manchester," which, as we shall see, closely resembled
what the lawyers thought that a Court Leet ought to be. It
is true that at this Court the Jury elected a Boroughreeve, an
officer whose title would have led us rather to expect his
election at the Court Baron. But the Boroughreeve of
Manchester had nothing to do with collecting the Lord's rents
and dues from his burgage or other tenants, nor had he even
to manage any of the common affairs of the tenants of the
Manor. For the period with which we are concerned he was
merely the head police officer, 2 superintending the two Con-
stables and representing the little community to the rest of the
world. Whatever inter-mixture of the agricultural or other
common interests of the tenants of the Manor there may have
been in preceding centuries, the Manchester Court Leet between
1689 and 1835 was concerned exclusively with the suppression
of the ever -increasing urban nuisances, the making of the
usual By-laws for the regulation of the streets, and the appoint-
1 Particulars as to the actual work and character of the Court Baron for
Manchester are scanty ; see the Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on the
Courts of Common Law, 1833, pp. 53a, 75a, 78a, and especially 1-5& ; A Picture
of Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 30 ; History of Lancashire, by John
Corry, 1825, vol. ii. p. 477.
2 "We came on to Manchester, one of the greatest, if not the greatest mere
village in England. It is neither a walled town, city, nor Corporation ; it sends
no members to Parliament ; and the highest magistrate there is a Constable
or Headborough ; and yet it has a Collegiate Church, besides several other
churches ; takes up a large space of ground ; and, including the suburbs, or that
part of the town on the other side of the bridge [Salford], it is said to contain
above 50,000 people. ... I cannot doubt but this increasing town will, some
time or other, obtain some better face of government and be incorporated, as it
very well deserves to be " (A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain,
by D. Defoe, vol. iii. pp. 219, 220 of edition of 1742). Defoe greatly exaggerated
the population of Manchester and Salford, which on his visit probably did not
reach 20,000. In 1689 Manchester alone was put at about 6000 ; in 1774 at
41,000 ; in 1801 it was 84,000, and in 1831, 122,000.
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 101
ment of the multitudinous public officers requisite for these
objects. 1
The Court Leet of the Manor of Manchester is remarkable
for its highly developed organisation. Held always by the
Steward of the Lord of the Manor, with a Jury appointed at
the preceding Court, it seems from the earliest recorded times
to have claimed the attendance of every " Burgess " of the
Township of Manchester, or his eldest son or wife, under
penalty of threepence fine. This obligation on every holder of
a burgage tenement may be connected with the grant of the
charter of 1301 and the practice of the Portmanmoot of the
Township. 2 In the eighteenth century, when the meaning of
the custom had been forgotten, it seems to have been assumed by
the Court that every male resident over twelve years of age was
under obligation to attend ; and we have evidence that an im-
mense list of names -was actually called over, with a view to
imposing, for the profit of some of the officers, a fine of three-
pence each on those who did not answer to their names. 3
1 We must leave to the historians of earlier centuries to decide whether the
Court Baron and Court Leet of Manchester, as we find them in 1689, were
descended from one Court of the Manor or from more than one Court. In the
fourteenth century there had been a Court Baron of Manchester, sitting from
three weeks to three weeks, exercising jurisdiction over the whole Barony of
Manchester. Professor Tait supposes this Court, in shrinking in jurisdiction to
the township of Manchester, to have become what we find, in 1552, as the
Court Leet (Mediaeval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James
Tait, 1904, p. 35). On the other hand, the Charter of 1301 gave the
inhabitants of the township a "curia burgi," "Portmanmoot," or Borough
Court of their own, which elected the head officer or Reeve, and had jurisdiction
over the Burgesses of the narrower area of the township in debt and assault.
This Court seems to us more likely to have been the ancestor of the Court Leet
of the earliest records of 1552. What is revealed in those records is exactly a
Borough Court. It is never described as a Court Baron. We suspect that the
Court of the Barony of Manchester at no time coalesced with the Portmanmoot,
Borough Court, or Court Leet of the Township. The so-called "Court Baron of
Manchester " of the eighteenth century may have been the direct descendant of
the Court of the Barony. On the other hand, it is possible that the Great Court
of the Barony was simply discontinued. We suggest that the Court Baron
that we find in the eighteenth century, exercising jurisdiction only over the
Township, may be the descendant of the Halmote Court held by the Lord for
the Manor of the Township alone, the Court Baron side of which he retained in
his own hands when he granted to his new Burgesses the right to hold a
separate Portmanmoot.
2 There was a similar obligation at Salford and Stockport, which had received
baronial Charters in the thirteenth century, on which the Manchester Charter of
1301 was probably modelled (Mediceval Manchester and the Beginnings of
Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 51).
3 In the formal charge to the Jury of the Steward for 1788 (Roberts) we
have it stated that the poorer inhabitants, "to avoid payment of the threepence,
102 THE COURT IN RUINS
But the distinguishing feature of the Manchester Court
was the unusually large number of officers who were nominated
by the Jury and formally appointed by the Court. These
officers were required to serve their term of twelve months,
all of them originally without remuneration. At their head
was the Boroughreeve, the executive chief of the little com-
munity, who presided at all public meetings, and though with-
out any of the authority of a Justice of the Peace, in many
ways acted as the representative of the town. " In no Corpora-
tion," says a writer of 1816, "is the Mayor for the time being
treated with more respect, the paraphernalia of a mace-bearer
excepted, than the Boroughreeve of Manchester." 1 Second
only to the Boroughreeve were the two Constables, who were
always appointed together, and who acted jointly and severally
as his principal lieutenants, without, so far as we can ascertain,
any distinction of function. But besides these dignitaries, the
Court appointed annually an ever-increasing array of other
officers, who, by 1689, had come to number over one hundred. 2
Among these were the usual Aleconners and Scavengers, with
innumerable others, such as Market-lookers and Muzzlers of
Mastiff Dogs. It seems long to have been the practice, when-
ever the need for any new function or any particular nuisance
or abuse forced itself upon the attention of the Jury, for a new
and compulsorily serving officer to be appointed 3 to see that
attend the Court and listen to the calling over an immense roll of names, until
they answer to their own, by which the greater part of the day is lost. ... As
to the common practice of calling over all the names of so populous a Manor as
Manchester, it occasions loss of time to the poor, is productive of no advantage,
no emolument but a trifling perquisite to the inferior officers of the Court, and
the liberality of the present Lord of the Manor would induce him to correct this
practice " ("Charge of 1788," reprinted in The Court Leet Records of the Manor
of Manchester, vol. ix. p. 244).
1 A Picture of Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 27. At Birmingham
and Bolton, as well as at Salford, the Chief Officer of the Lord's Court bore the
same title, which we have not found elsewhere, though Portreeve is not uncom-
mon in the South of England, and Headborough, Boroughhead, and Borsholder
are frequently met with.
2 Already in the earliest record, that of 4th October 1552, we find 59 officers
appointed (The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. i. p. 1) ;
the number rising to 110 on 5th October 1686 (vol. vi. p. 241), and to 138 on
15th October 1756 (vol. viii. p. 1).
3 The Burgesses had possessed a right to pasture their pigs in the woods
and on the waste of the manor. "In the sixteenth century pigs wandering
about the streets and even into the churchyard became such a nuisance that a
public swineherd was started, who assembled his charges with a horn in the
morning, and led them out to the Lord's waste at Collyhurst " (Mediaeval Man-
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 103
the regulations of the Court were enforced ; and once an office
was created, it continued to be filled year after year, even if its
functions had become obsolete. These compulsory offices were,
however, rapidly becoming merely honorary sinecures. " Many
of these offices," said the learned Steward of the Manor in
1788, "have an appearance of throwing a degree of indignity
on the possessors, and it not infrequently happens that the
muscles of the gravest are relaxed when they hear the most
respectable names being annexed to the offices of Scavengers,
Market-lookers, and Muzzlers of Mastiff Dogs." But the duties,
he explained, were more easy and dignified than the titles im-
plied. " If a Scavenger see any person obstructing the streets
in any manner whatever; or if a Market-looker find any un-
wholesome meat exposed for sale, he has nothing to do but to
make a memorandum of the offender's name, and the time of
committing the offence, and to give information thereat at the
next Court Leet, and the offender will be amerced." * Unlike
most other Manorial Courts, that of Manchester levied a rate
on the inhabitants we find " Mysegatherers " appointed as
early as 1554, and the "Town Lay" is regularly mentioned
down to 1780, when it was merged in the Poor Eate levied by
the Overseers. 2 Either out of this rate, or else by customary
Chester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 49). The
Court even appointed its own public musicians in the form of the " Town Waits,"
who were ordered by the Court to play through the town on every Thursday
evening "according to the ancient custom." They were evidently remunerated
by voluntary gifts from the inhabitants (The Court Leet Records of the Manor of
Manchester, 5th October 1669 and 16th April 1672, vol. v. pp. vi, 99, 166).
1 A Charge to the Grand Jury of the Court Leet of the Manor of Manchester,
by William Roberts, 1788 ; reprinted in The Court Leet Records of the Manor
of Manchester, vol. ix., Appendix I., p. 251.
2 Thus, in 1590, the Jury present the stairs leading to the river as in a bad
state, and they order the "Myselayers for the time being, calling unto them the
Constables, with six other honest neighbours, shall assess the inhabitants of the
town for the repairing of the stairs ; and have appointed A. B., etc., to receive
the same moneys so gathered, and to bestow the same, and give an account of
the remainder to the next Jury " (ibid. vol. ii. p. 50). It was probable that
such " Town Rates " or " Constables' Rates " were elsewhere levied by the Lord's
Court (instead of by the Vestry as Church Rates), but the only other case of
which we have definite mention is that of Lewes (Sussex), where, in 1772, at the
" Lawday " it was " resolved that the Constables and Jury at the Court Leet or
Lawday chosen shall and do continue to have power to make and collect a town tax
for defraying the necessary expenses of the borough " (signed by 86 inhabitants).
In 1822-1823 the Constables were still levying a "town tax" of a shilling in
the pound (The History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824-
1832, p. 211 ; see infra, p. 173).
104 THE CO URT IN R UINS
fees, paid officers could be remunerated, and already in the first
half of the seventeenth century there were evidently such
deputies in existence. In 1648 we see the Court appointing
a permanent officer, the Deputy Constable, 1 who serves continu-
ously year after year, on whom most of the work is gradually
devolved, and to whom an ever-rising annual salary is awarded. 2
Presently other salaried officers are added, in the shape of one,
two, and eventually four Beadles, resplendent, a century ago, in
" livery of brown, with scarlet collars, coat, waistcoat, breeches,
and leggings." 3
The Court thus constituted and served attempted
courageously to cope with all the needs of the growing
town. " Cows, horses, sheep, pigs, dogs all required regula-
tion, and had it. Pigs, as the most perverse animals, required
the firmest and most rigorous handling ; and hundreds of
folio pages of Jury orders relate to swine alone and their
numerous misdeeds and nuisances, their eating corn in the
market and desecrating the churchyard." 4 We see the Jury
not only enforcing the Assize of Bread and Beer, but also
insisting that all the innumerable officers should duly make
the presentments incidental to their several offices, from the
use of unlawful weights and measures and the exposure for
sale of " unbaited " beef, up to the enforcement of the obligation
1 10th October 1648. "It is ordered by this Jury that whereas there is
found much inconveniences by paying Deputy Constables' wages per particular,
and that the said Deputy Constable, that shall be made choice of by and for the
assistance of these Constables, shall have for all the service and attendance due
and appertaining to the said office of Deputy Constable the sum of ten pounds
per annum, and that to be paid by fifty shillings per quarter " (The Court Leet
Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. iv. p. 25).
2 It was 20 in 1756, 30 in 1762, 80 in 1778, 150 in 1786, the same
in 1802 when Nadin was appointed; 200 in 1805 ; in 1821 Lavender was
appointed at 350, and raised in 1822 to 600, at which figure it remained until
his death in 1833. Beadles, at first one and ultimately four, begin at 5 only,
but end with 78 a year each (ibid. vols. iv. to x.). These salaries and many
other expenses were charged in the Boroughreeve's accounts, which were annually
submitted to the Court and passed by the Jury (for these accounts from 1612 to
1776, see The Constables' Accounts of the Manor of Manchester, by J. P. Ear-
waker, 3 vols., 1891-1892). In the nineteenth century, as described in a pre-
vious volume, we find them presented to and passed by the Open Vestry, prior
to their inclusion in the Poor Rate, in accordance with 18 George III. c. 19 of
1778, which prescribed this for the accounts of the ordinary Parish Constables.
3 Reminiscences of Old Manchester and Salford, by an Octogenarian, 1887,
p. 18.
4 Manchester Court Leet Records, by John Harland, Chetham Society, vol.
63, 1864, p. viii.
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 105
to keep watch in turn, and the execution of various new By-
laws forbidding waggons to stand in the streets or the playing
of football or " tipcat " in the streets. 1 We gather that the
presentments were made either by the Jury as a whole, by
any of the officers, or even by individuals not officers, whose
complaints occasionally led directly to orders by the Jury. 2
The majority of the presentments and orders between 1731
and 1846 relate either to market offences, the sale of unwhole-
some or " unmarketable " meat or fish, " blowing veal," the use
of deficient weights or short measures, or the cutting or gashing
of hides ; or, on the other hand, to the innumerable nuisances
of a growing city, from allowing swine to roam in the streets,
or not repairing or cleaning the pavement, up to such modern
annoyances as excessive factory smoke, 8 the stench from gas
lime, 4 mock auctions, and the firing of pistols. 5 What is
remarkable in the Manchester Court is the freedom with
which it used what it conceived to be its power of making
By-laws, by which it did not scruple to create new punishable
offences. Thus in 1731 we find the Jury, "upon complaint
made by several persons of people bringing milk to town
suffering their horses to stand in the street with their cans on,
whilst they sell their milk," peremptorily ordering the milk-
sellers " that they shall not suffer them to stand in the streets,
but that they shall set down their cans and put their horses
in some stables ; or we do amerce them five shillings apiece." 6
In 1732 the Jury orders that "the Scavengers do see that the
1 The Court Led Records of the Manor of Manchester, 12th October 1608, vol.
ii. pp. vi, 239-240.
2 Thus, 18th April 1733, "whereas complaint hath been made to us that
W. B. . . . suffers his large bull-dog to go abroad unmuzzled," the Jury orders
that the dog is to be muzzled in future, or that in default W. B. shall be fined
twenty shillings " (ibid. vol. vii. p. 20).
3 Inl801,asa local annalist records, " the Court Leet Jury presented eleven
owners of factories for not consuming their smoke ; they were fined respectively
100, but the fines were respited to allow time for their being altered"
(Manchester Historical Recorder, 1874, p. 65).
4 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 20th October 1820
(vol. xi. p. 6).
Ibid. 21st October 1831 (vol. xi. pp. 257-258).
6 1st October 1731 (ibid. vol. vii. p. 7). The By-law is repeated two years
later, when the fine is raised to ten shillings, and the Jury "order that the
Bellman shall publish this order three several times, in one week's time, at the
Milk Market, and that the Constable pay him for his pains" (ibid. vol. vii.
p. 26). It is again repeated in 1744, when the fine is raised to thirty-nine
shillings (ibid. vol. vii. p. 131).
io6 THE COURT IN RUINS
dirt swept together shall not be left in heaps, but orders to be
given to the usual inhabitants to remove the same, and not
suffered to lie in heaps in the middle of the street." l At the
same Court it is recorded that "we ... upon complaint
made to us of servants and persons employed in looking after
horses do frequently bring their horses into the public streets,
and there dress them, which becomes a nuisance . . .do order
that no person shall presume to do the like for the future, and
that this be made public." 2 Next year it is commanded that
" no person does for the future break any hogsheads ... in
the street called Millgate ... or any other hogsheads within
this Manor, without immediately cleansing and sweeping the
same, on penalty of forty shillings for each offence." 8 In
1737 it is ordained that "for the future no tanner or other
person shall lay down raw hides in the street or passage beside
the shambles," under penalty of twenty shillings for each
offence. 4
The Court had also, in a sense, important administrative
functions. The most valuable incidents of the Manor were
the profits of the Soke Mill and Oven, 6 and of the Market.
The large and growing revenues yielded to the Lord by these
1 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 5th May 1732 (vol. vii.
p. 11).
2 Ibid. 5th May 1732 (vol. vii. p. 10).
8 Ibid. 18th April 1733 (vol. vii. p. 20). "Long Millgate was," down to
Victorian times, "a leading thoroughfare, the highway to the North of England "
(Reminiscences of Old Manchester and Salford, by an Octogenarian, 1887, p. 43).
4 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 6th October 1737 (vol.
vii. p. 66).
6 Trie Charter of 1301 had continued the obligation of the Burgesses to
grind their corn at the Lord's mill, to dry their malt at his kiln, and bake their
bread at his oven. These monopolies continued to be actively enforced, for his
profit, by his lessees and agents, giving rise, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, to constant friction ; and, it is said, between 1550 and 1758 to no
fewer than sixty lawsuits. The exactions of the lessees of the Soke Mill in
1757 provoked the serious riots of that year, which led, in 1758, to a Local
Act restricting the monopoly to the drying of malt. The monopoly had passed
to the Trustees of the Manchester Grammar School, who were accorded, in partial
compensation, a perpetual exemption from all local rates and taxes (32
George II. c. 61). The remaining monopoly of the malt kiln continued in
their hands, their profit or tax being twopence a bushel. This was said to
induce brewers to settle outside the boundary (A Picture of Manchester, by
Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 168). Nevertheless it was, in 1825, productive of no
less than 2250 a year (Mediaeval Manchester and the beginnings of Lancashire,
by James Tait, 1904, p. 50). This impost continued until the premises were
sold to a railway company and the mill was discontinued (History of Corn-
milling, by E. Bennett and J. Elton, 1898-1904).
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 107
monopolies were either leased or else collected under the
direction of the Steward, who himself appointed his toll-
gatherers and other agents. 1 But the Burgesses, the jurymen,
and the officers of the Lord's Court had also their part to play.
The annual Fair, for instance, held under a grant of 1227 at
" Four Acres " or " Acrefield," represented, it is clear, an
interference with ancient rights of commonfield agriculture
and common pasture. 2 In the course of the eighteenth century
this three-days' Fair became in the main a popular holiday,
and in the nineteenth century a saturnalia. It yielded, however,
no small revenue to the Lord, and was therefore continued in
ancient form. 8 " On the second day the Steward of the Lord
of the Manor (accompanied in procession by the Boroughreeve,
the- two Constables, and a few persons who represent Burgesses
who owe suit to the Court of the Lord) proclaims the right of
the Lord of the Manor to hold the Fair in that place." 4 More
important was the participation of the Court in the adminis-
tration of the ancient prescriptive Market, which had been
held weekly since at any rate 1282. Though the Lord
collected his own dues, it would seem that the actual manage-
ment of the various market-places and the making of market
rules and By-laws were, like the presentment of offenders
against them, in the hands of the Court. We find the Jury
deciding the hour at which the markets for flour, wheat, and
oats respectively shall be opened by the ringing of a bell, and
ordering " that no person does hereafter presume to sell any
1 In 1731 the Court amerced the "Receiver of the Tolls" ten shillings, for
*not keeping a certain street clear (The Court Leet Records of the Manor of
Manchester, vol. vii. p. 8).
2 ' ' An ancient custom obtained of pelting the first animal driven into the
Fair with acorns and striking it with whips. This has been very conjecturally
explained as a survival of an original protest of the inhabitants against the
interference with their grazing rights by the establishment of the Fair"
(Mediaeval MancJiester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904,
p. 45). The Fair days were the 20th, 21st, and 22nd of September. From
fair-time till February the Acrefield was common pasture ; from February till
fair-time under arable cultivation. " As late as the beginning of the eighteenth
century, corn growing on Acrefield had sometimes to be hastily cut and carried
away before the fair or the people would have trampled it down " (ibid. p. 45).
3 In 1708 Lady Ann Bland got a private Act enabling her to enclose the
Acrefield and build St. Ann's Church ; but she had to submit to the condition
that a space 30 yards wide should be left open for the Fair.
4 A Picture of Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 215. The Fair grew
to be such a nuisance in the nineteenth century that it was moved, first to
Shudehill, and then to Campfield ; but it was not finally abolished until 1876.
io8 THE COURT IN RUINS
meal before such bell rings, on pain of punishment." l They
order the " cheese market " to be removed from one place, and
the " fish market " from another, assigning new sites at their
discretion. 2 They insist on stopping the butchers from selling
meat right into the night of Saturday, and even on Sunday
morning, imposing a closing time of eleven o'clock at night. 3
They forbid, under penalty of a fine, any sack of oats to be
offered for sale that contains less than 18 strokes, Winchester
measure ; or any horseload of coal weighing less than two
hundred pounds, six score to the hundred, sack included ; or
any cartload less than twelve hundred pounds. 4 They prohibit
fruit stalls at this place or that, and exclude hucksters from
the market. 6 In 1774 they remove the earthenware market
which had grown up " in the street called Smithy Door " to
f the north side of the old churchyard. 6 They exclude all dogs,
whether " male or female," from the flesh market. 7
How far these administrative decisions with regard to such
important a source of Manorial revenue as the Manchester
market were really left to the discretion of the Jury, and
how far they represented only a convenient method of
strengthening and promulgating the decisions of the Manorial
officers, we cannqt now determine. What is clear from the
records is that year by year the Court went on appointing
its officers, making its presentments, and imposing its fines
with unslackened zeal, and doing an undiminished amount of
work right down to the nineteenth century. Meanwhile
the township of Manchester which had in 1774 still only
41,000 inhabitants had sprung rapidly into a densely
crowded, populous city. The mere " keeping the peace " in
this heterogeneous aggregation of factory operatives, newly
gathered together from all parts, soon transcended the scanty
powers wielded by the Boroughreeve and his two Constables.
As officers of the Court Leet they were not Justices of the
1 The Court Led Records of ike Manor of Manchester, 16th April 1735,
vol. vii. p. 38.
a Ibid. 29th April 1736, vol. vii. p. 48.
3 Ibid. 27th April 1738, vol. vii. p. 70.
* Ibid. 29th April 1736, vol. vii. p. 49.
6 Ibid. 6th October 1737, vol. vii. p. 66 ; 22nd October 1741, vol. vii.
p. 110.
6 Ibid. 12th October 1774, vol. vii. p. 159.
f Ibid. 14th April 1828, vol. xi. p. 189.
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 109
Peace, and the whele city had to depend for a police court
on the good pleasure of half a dozen of the neighbouring
country gentlemen, who took it in turns to ride into the
town and commit offenders to the County gaol. 1 The nightly
" watching " of such a town was utterly beyond the power
of the two wealthy warehousemen or merchants who had been
appointed Constables; and the obligation really enforced in
the seventeenth century on all the inhabitants to " watch "
in turn, bringing " each a Jack, a Sallet, and a Bill," 2 " or
hire some sufficient person to do it," 3 was manifestly im-
practicable among a wage-earning, factory-working population.
In 1765, and again in 1792, Acts of Parliament were
obtained by the principal inhabitants establishing a body
of Police Commissioners for Manchester and Salford, with
power to appoint paid watchmen, light the streets, and levy
a police rate ; but so great was apparently the reluctance
to these new measures that until 1797 practically nothing
was done, and the dignity of the Court Leet remained un-
impaired by any rival authority. As late as 1799 we find
the Steward declaring the " new constitution of local govern-
ment " to have been a failure, and urging the Jury to be
active and all-embracing in their presentments. 4
1 " The towns of Manchester and Salford and the adjacent towns and villages
now united with them by contiguous streets and buildings comprise a popula-
tion far exceeding 100,000, and form together the largest provincial town in
Great Britain ; yet among this vast community there is not one resident Magis-
trate nor any Municipal government but the officers of the Court Leet, among
whom there is no permanent authority above that of a Petty Constable. . . .
For the local administration of justice, five Magistrates of the County residing
nearest to the place have, much to their honour, undertaken the whole of this
tiurthensome duty ; one of them resorting to the town for this purpose every
Monday, and two every Thursday, by a rotation among themselves " (Report
of the Committee appointed to secure Reforms, etc., 1808).
2 The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, 6th October 1568,
vol. i. p. 123.
3 Ibid. vol. vi.
4 "Now, Gentlemen," said the Steward to the Jury in 1799, "what has
happened since the erection of the new constitution of local government ? During
the wet and dark winter months the streets have remained uncleansed and
without lights ; for some time no watchmen or patrols were appointed security
and temptation were thus afforded to plunder, and none could pass through the
streets in safety ; escaping personal violence, they were in imminent personal
danger from the numerous unguarded cellar-pits and various obstructions that
everywhere interrupted their passage. . . . Though innumerable buildings are
everywhere rising up and crowded together ... no party walls have been
erected. . . . Streets are still crowded with annoyances which the power of the
new Act was calculated to remove. Offenders are everywhere encouraged by
1 10 THE CO URT IN R UINS
A new period opens for Manchester with the nineteenth
century. In its opening years, as we shall describe in a
subsequent volume, the Police Commissioners began at last
actively to bestir themselves, and they gradually organised
something like an efficient service of watching, cleansing,
and lighting the town. For the first eighteen years of the
century the Police Commissioners were, however, completely
dominated by the officers of the Lord's Court. The Borough-
reeve for the time being not only presided at all the meetings,
but also acted as Treasurer and as Chairman of the General
or Finance Committee ; whilst the two Constables acted as
Chairmen of the two principal administrative departments,
namely, the Watch Committee and the Committee for Lighting
and Scavengering. Such police force as existed, either night-
watchmen or " patrols," was thus under their personal command.
Many of the offences which had formerly been presented at
the Lord's Court had now been forbidden by explicit clauses
in the Police Commissioners' Acts, and were therefore sum-
marily dealt with by the Justices, but the Commissioners
went on making use also of the Lord's Court as a convenient
tribunal, and the Jury did not discontinue its own activity,
especially with regard to false weights and measures and
unwholesome food. We even find this energetic Court at the
beginning of the nineteenth century presenting and fining
mill-owners for letting their cotton factories get into a dirty
condition, whilst the most common of all nuisances punished
at this date was the emitting of large quantities of smoke by
the new steam engines. The Lord's Court remained, in fact,
a dignified and influential tribunal. The Steward was a
learned barrister, who opened the six-monthly " Court Leet
and View of Frankpledge" with an elaborate proclamation.
The jurymen were chosen by the Steward from among the
wealthy leaders of the commercial and manufacturing class,
always predominantly Tory and Anglican in opinion. The
annually nominated Constables were invariably local magnates
belonging to the industrial aristocracy of the town. In turn
one of the past Constables served as Boroughreeve. 1 Down to
the impunity with which their trespasses are committed" ("Charge of John
Cross, Esquire," reprinted in The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester,
vol. ix. Appendix II.).
1 "It has long been a rule in the choice of the Boroughreeve to select those
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER in
1818, at any rate, all the "police and sanitary" government
of Manchester remained unchallenged in the hands practically
of the little knot of leading inhabitants who were summoned
as jurymen to the Lord's Court and who took it in turns to
serve as Boroughreeve. This supremacy was made possible,
first, by the genuine public spirit which they showed in dis-
charging the onerous duties of the Manorial offices ; and,
secondly, by their practical wisdom in admitting into the
governing circle not only the Churchwardens, Overseers, and
Surveyors of Highways, but also the principal Whig and Non-
conformist merchants and warehousemen.
We have already described the advent, at Manchester in
1818, of a turbulent Democracy, which first showed itself in
tumultuous Vestry meetings at the Collegiate Church, and
proceeded, about 1827, to swamp the Police Commissioners
by qualifying, in hundreds, for membership of that body.
This Democracy, made up for the most part of the small
shopkeepers and publicans, felt itself completely excluded
from the choice of Boroughreeve and Constables. The Steward
did not summon its members as jurymen to the Lord's Court,
still less were they appointed to any of the Manorial offices
or as special constables. But the Constables' accounts, in-
cluding the salary of the Deputy Constable, had, by statute,
to be presented by the Overseers to the Vestry meeting, and
had to be passed by that assembly. We have seen, in a
preceding chapter, how eagerly the Eadicals seized, from 1820
onward, this opportunity of cavilling at every item of the
expenditure of such "unrepresentative" authorities as the
Boroughreeve and Constables. At Leeds, it will be re-
membered, it was the action of the " unrepresentative " Mayor
and Corporation that was similarly objected to. The
Manchester officers had neither the authority of Justices
of the Peace nor the power to levy a County Rate. But
they were backed up by the neighbouring County Justices,
and above all, they were supported by the opulent Whigs of
Manchester itself a class which at Leeds, where it was
excluded from the Corporation, had made common cause with
the Democracy. The result was that, though between 1818
gentlemen who have already served the office of Constable " (A Picture of
Manchester, by Joseph Aston, 1816, p. 27).
112 THE COURT IN RUINS
and 1837 there were uproarious scenes at the Vestry and
Police Commissioners' meetings, from which the Boroughreeve
was once forcibly ejected, 1 the governing circle of the Lord's
Court held its own to the end. When in 1828 the constitu-
tion of the Police Commissioners was reformed by a new Act,
the Boroughreeve and Constables dominated the new elective
body as successfully as they had the old one. The growing
force of night and day police remained effectively under their
control. The Lord's Court went on presenting offenders and
enforcing its fines. Finally, with the change in public feeling
which came with the Keforin Bill, and perhaps still more with
the change in social habits which was inducing the wealthier
inhabitants more and more to live outside the town, this
opulent governing circle became tired of its duties. It was
found increasingly difficult to find a suitable person to act
as Boroughreeve, 2 and in 1836 and 1837 the individuals
nominated preferred to pay heavy fines, running up to 100,
rather than serve. 8 Eichard Cobden, then a young but
prosperous calico printer, summoned as a juryman in 1837,
drew up a protest calling for some change, which his
colleagues on the Jury consented to sign. 4 Out of this
1 " At a meeting of the Commissioners (1827) party spirit ran so high that
the Boroughreeve, C. Cross, Esquire, who presided, was assaulted and forcibly
ejected" (The Manchester Historical Recorder, 1874, p. 92).
2 We have already mentioned (Vol. I. The Parish and the County, pp. 19, 63)
that the Tyburn Ticket, exempting the holder from parish offices, fetched a much
higher price in Manchester than elsewhere. In 1804 the two persons appointed
Constables claimed exemption as holders of such tickets, but the Court refused to
allow it. The case was carried to the King's Bench, which maintained the
exemption (Mosley v. Stouehouse and Railton, llth February 1806 ; The Court
Led Records of the Manor of Manchester, vol. ix. pp. 215, 216).
3 Manchester Guardian, 12th October 1836.
* We append this protest, which is of interest as the earliest publication by
Cobden, as published in the Manchester Guardian, 25th October 1837. "The
Jury serving at the Court Leet of the Lord of the Manor of Manchester cannot
separate without publicly making known the very great difficulties they have had
to encounter in the discharge of their most important duty, the selection of a
Boroughreeve for this township. From the great increase of the trade of the
places and the consequent conversion of the dwelling-houses situated in the centre
of the town into warehouses, the manufacturers, merchants, and other principal
inhabitants of Manchester have, with a very few exceptions, removed their
residences into the out-townships ; but as the jurisdiction of this Court does not
extend beyond the ancient and circumscribed limits of Manchester, the Jury have
been placed in a difficult position, owing to the very restricted number of residents
who are eligible to serve the office of Boroughreeve, and the difficulty is materi-
ally increased by the aversion which now and for some time past has been mani-
fested by the individuals selected to fill the office. In proof of which, at the
COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER 113
grew the movement, headed by Cobden and the Brothers
Potter, for the incorporation of the Borough. " Is Man-
chester," indignantly asked Cobden at a public meeting, " to
be governed from Rolleston Hall, in Staffordshire ? " l
last Court Leet the person named for Boroughreeve voluntarily incurred a large
pecuniary penalty rather than accept the office ; and again, on the present occa-
sion the individual appointed has declined to serve, and thus subjected himself
to a still heavier fine. But so far from there being a prospect of any diminution
of this difficulty in future, the Court has deemed it necessary to declare that,
seeing the fear of pecuniary penalties is insufficient, it will proceed by indictment
against all such as may refuse to accept its appointment. In the meanwhile the
changes of abode referred to are still going on, and it is known that many indi-
viduals, to escape from the jurisdiction of this Court, are now preparing to remove
to the out-townships ; from which the Jury are of opinion that the difficulties of
their successors at the next Court Leet will be much increased, and possibly
they 'may be compelled, in the absence of proper persons, to make choice of an
unfit individual to hold the most important office in the town. The Jury regard
such a state of things as highly inimical to the best interests, and derogatory to
the just dignity, of this the second town of the Empire, and they earnestly hope
and recommend that immediate steps may be taken to remedy the evil." This
was signed by the whole fifteen jurymen, among them being such leading indus-
trial magnates as Daniel Broadhurst, William M'Connel, and Edmund Potter,
as well as Richard Cobden himself.
1 Manchester Guardian, 10th February 1838. Rolleston Hall was the resid-
ence of the Lord of the Manor. A Charter was granted in 1838, but, owing to
political and legal difficulties, it was not until 1842 that it was confirmed by
Act of Parliament. In 1846 the Town Council bought from Sir Oswald Mosley,
for the enormous sum of 200,000, the Manor and all the rights and incidents ;
and the Lord's Court, regarded as a symbol of feudalism and a remnant of the
past Tory supremacy, was allowed quietly to lapse. The Manor had iieen worth
in 1282, 131 ; in 1665 (with shrunken area), 212 ; in 1579 it was sold for
3000 ; in 1596 a Mosley bought it for 3500 ; the town might have bought
it in 1808 for 90,000, but thought the price excessive ; by 1846 unearned
increment had brought it to 200,000 ! (see figures given in Mediaeval Man-
chester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904, p. 37).
Some of the smaller towns of Lancashire seem to have had, between 1689
and 1835, a local government under the Lord's Court, on the same lines as that
of Manchester. ' ' The towns of Great and Little Bolton the two Boltons, as
they were commonly called had from time immemorial . . . been subject to
the local authority of the Lords of the respective Manors. . . . Once a year in
each place there was a Court Leet, the agent of the Lord of the Manor being the
presiding authority, and this Court would proceed to appoint a Boroughreeve
as head officer, and a staff of officials as Constables, Ale-tasters, Pig-ringers, Bell-
men, and other functionaries." As at Manchester, "the powers of the Courts
Leet were not extinguished or absorbed on the establishment in 1792 of a
statutory body of Street Commissioners, and the annual Court Leet visit to
Church on the first Sunday morning after election, preceded as it was by a grand
breakfast the same morning at one of the leading inns, used to be a ceremonial
invested with much consequence" (Annals of Bolton, by James Clegg, 1888,
sec. 2, p. 9). Latterly, at any rate, there was a paid Deputy Constable with paid
assistants (Autobiography of a Lancashire Lawyer, by John Taylor, 1883, p. 32).
Much the same conditions existed at Rochdale, though we do not gather that
its chief officer was styled Boroughreeve (History of Rochdale, by Henry Fishwick,
1889, p. 62) ; and at other towns in South Lancashire and Cheshire.
In the ancient town of Ashtou-under-Lyne, we have an instance of the
VOL. II. PT. I I
ii 4 THE COURT IN RUINS
(d) The Prevalence and Decay of the Lord's Court
We have now set before the reader a description of each
of the types of Lord's Courts that we find exercising any of
the functions of Local Government between 1689 and 1835.
It remains to be considered how widely these types prevailed
in the England and Wales of that period, and at what rate
their activities gradually dwindled away. On these points we
effective survival of the Court of the Manor as a local governing authority.
The owner of the township in the nineteenth century waa the Earl of Stam-
ford and Warrington, drawing, in 1844, a rental of 30,000 a year from some
two thousand tenants. Though a body of Street Commissioners had been
established under Local Acts, the admirably preserved records of the "Court
Leet and View of Frankpledge and Court Baron of the Manor of Ashton-
under-Lyne," confirmed by a full account of its proceedings for the year 1844,
make it clear that, down to the middle of the nineteenth century at any rate,
it was this Court that was the most important local governing authority.
What we may call its Court Baron side, the trial of civil actions, though
mentioned as active by Aikin (1795) and Corry (1825), had apparently fallen
into disuse after the establishment of a Court of Requests by Local Act of 1808.
The ancient Manorial sokemill had long been disused. But throughout the whole
of the nineteenth century the Steward annually proclaimed, by placards and adver-
tisements in the newspapers, the date of the approaching Court at the ancient
Manor Courthouse, issuing special summonses to the existing Jury and officers, and
also to the persons elected by him to serve as jurymen for the ensuing twelve
months. At nine o'clock, we are told in 1844, " the Court is opened by proclama-
tion. The Foreman of the Jury delivers in a written verdict," in which, at the
Michaelmas Court, proper persons are " presented " to serve. The " verdict " of
the Jury then proceeds to present ' ' the several offences that had been inspected
during the preceding six months, which the Steward reads in a loud voice in the
hearing of every one present ; and at the conclusion of the reading undertakes,
as far as Lord Stamford is concerned, to remedy without unnecessary delay the
grievances presented in the verdict." The presentments (which, when they
related to freehold property, were sometimes "traversed" by the defendant ; see
a case, 29th April 1795) were numerous and important. The Manor contained a
considerable number of small freeholders, or holders of leases for long terms or
several lives, who, in their sub-lettings, often proved "careless or avaricious
landlords, whom neither the Local Acts nor common law could effectually reach."
Hence the presentments of the Jury were used, both by Lord Stamford's agents
and by the Street Commissioners, as convenient means of compelling such land-
lords to provide proper sanitary conveniences, to maintain pavements and fencing,
to provide and cleanse drains, and to repair the roads. "When the Steward
had finished the reading of the verdict, he uniformly directs one of the
officers of the Leet to call over the names of the suitors which comprehend
all the tenants of Lord Stamford, and also all the freeholders (or frankpledgers,
as they were anciently called) without the Manor, whether they be tenants of
his Lordship or not. In cases where the suitors appear by proxy, when their
names are called in Court a charge of twopence per head is exacted as an
acknowledgment, and one of the Bailiffs of the Court receives the same in a
leathern purse attached to the end of a rod ten or twelve feet in length. . . .
The Steward then addresses the Jury from the bench on the matters to be
PREVALENCE AND DEC A Y OF THE LORDS COURT 115
do not find ourselves able to give any very accurate information.
No list or other systematic record of these Courts has ever
been made. Their proceedings were never reported in the
newspapers nor recorded by any superior tribunal. There is
reason to believe that the Steward, interested only in the
business relating to the properties of the several tenants of the
inquired of by them, embracing the subjects laid down in the law books (see
Kitchin on Courts) as coming under the cognisance of Courts Leet ; and as
occasion requires, he directs their attention to special circumstances like a
Judge of Assize. ... It is customary for about sixty or eighty of the gentle-
men of the town and neighbourhood to dine together at the Commercial
Hotel, the Steward of the Manor in the chair. The interchange of goodfellow-
ship that takes place on these occasions between the representative of Lord
Stamford and his tenantry contributes in no small degree to diffuse in Ashton-
under-Lyne a feeling of attachment to his Lordship's person and family ; and to
perpetuate from one generation to another a tacit acquiescence in the verdicts of
his Court Leet Jury, and to preserve from oblivion and extinction many of the
ancient rights, liberties, and customs of the Manor." The decisions of the Court
were, in fact, fully enforced. The fines imposed on defaulters and offenders
were included in a Manorial distress warrant, given to the Bailiffs after every
Court by the Steward. When any person contumaciously refused to pay, the
Bailiff of the Manor simply seized his goods without further authority and sold
them under the hammer.
The Ashton Court is remarkable as continuing down to the present day (1907)
not only to be held, but actually to exercise local government functions. Every
year the Court is held in ancient form, a " Mayor of the Manor, two High
Constables, four Constables, twelve Bylaw-men, one Inspector of Weights and
Measures, one Pounder, one Ale-taster, and three Bellmen " being appointed,
together with a Jury of thirteen and a foreman. Presentments of nuisances are
still regularly made by the Jury, to the number of half a dozen or so annually,
and the persons in default are amerced. What is perhaps more remarkable is
that the proceedings are still fully effective. The persons presented pay the
fines imposed and remedy the nuisances complained of. No resistance is met
with, but in case of default we are informed by the Steward of the Manor that
he would have no hesitation in issuing a warrant and distraining for the fine.
The presentments now refer usually to the highways, the persons presented
being the Municipal Corporations, district councils, and other highway authorities,
or occasionally private individuals. Even such great potentates as the Town
Council of Manchester and the London and North-Western Railway Company
are similarly treated (MS. Records, Manor Court of Ashton-under-Lyne, 1795-
1906, for access to which we are indebted to the present Earl of Stamford and
the trustees of the estate, and to Mr. Hall, the courteous Steward of the Manor ;
the graphic account of the actual proceedings of the Court in 1844, given
by the then Steward for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of Large
Towns and Populous Districts, Appendix to First Report, vol. ii. pp. 71-73 ;
Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, by J.
Aikin, 1795 ; History of Ashton-under-Lyne, by J. Butterworth, 1823 ; another,
by the same, 1827 ; Historical Account of Ashton, by E. Butterworth, 1842 ;
Illustrations of the Customs of a Manor in the North of England, by S.
Hibbert-Ware, 1822 ; Custom-Roll and Rental of the Manor of Ashton, 1422, by
J. Harland (Chetham Society, vol. Ixxiv. 1869) ; History of the County Palatine
and Duchy of Lancaster, by Edward Baines, vol. ii. pp. 300-329 of edition of
1888-1893 ; History of Lancashire, by John Corry, 1825, vol. ii. pp. 497-523 ;
Mediceval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, by James Tait, 1904).
1 16 THE CO URT IN R UINS
Manor, often omitted to enter the lengthy presentments of
the Jury about the management of the commonfield agriculture,
the petty nuisances of the hamlet, and the appointment of
Fieldsmen and Finders. Such scanty archives as the Stewards
did keep are now for the most part hidden away among title
deeds of property in family muniment rooms or solicitors'
offices. 1 Even where antiquarian zeal has led to the printing
and publication of Manor Eolls, this has, in almost all cases,
chosen rather the earlier periods and has stopped short of the
eighteenth century.
At the outset of our inquiries we shared the common
opinion that these Manorial jurisdictions had, so far at any
rate as Local Government functions were concerned, come
silently to an end before our period. 2 But as we extended
our researches from County to County this impression wore off.
1 We are even inclined to suggest that, in 1689, the holding of
a Manorial Court for the suppression of nuisances, the manage-
ment of the common pasture, and, less frequently, of the
commonfield agriculture and the appointment of Constables
and other officers for the district, was, in the thousands of
Manors that must still have existed, the rule rather than the
exception. It is true that already in the middle of the
seventeenth century we hear that the Lord's Court is held " in
some lazy lordships not at all, but left as a thing obsolete and
useless." 8 At the Restoration it was even thought necessary
1 The collections of Manor Rolls of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
most easily accessible to the student arc those of the Manors in the hands of
such public authorities as the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land
Revenues (a list of about 100 of whose Manors is given in a Parliamentary Paper
of 6th July 1845), and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who have in their
London offices at least as many. To both collections we have most courteously
been permitted access. The extensive collections at the Public Record Office
(see its List and Index, No. 6), the British Museum, Lambeth Palace, the
Bodleian Library, and the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges seem to relate
principally to the earlier centuries. A useful list of Manor records in the
principal public depositories is given in The Manor and Manorial Records, by
N. J. Hone, 1906, pp. 243-301.
2 So competent an antiquarian as the late F. B. Bickley could state that by
1700, " and indeed as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, the Lords
of the Manor had lost the jurisdiction they possessed in earlier times, and the
rolls become merely registers of the transfer of land by succession, surrender,
sale, or mortgage" (History of Dulwich College, by W. Young, 1889, vol. ii.
chap. ii. on the Court Rolls, by F. B. Bickley, p. 266).
3 Pacts Consultum, a Directory to the Public Peace, briefly describing the
Antiquity, Extent, Practice, and Jurisdiction of Several Country Corporation
Courts, especially the Court Leet, by Judge Jenkins, 1657, p. 2.
PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT 117
to provide that where the Lord's Court had for any reason not
appointed a Constable, two Justices might temporarily exercise
that power " until the Lord of the Leet shall hold his Court." 1
A somewhat later writer complains that "through the ignorance
of unskilful Stewards this Court is almost become a shadow,
so that in many places Justices of the Peace swear the
Constables, and the inhabitants present the nuisances at the
Sessions which ought to be presented here, whereby the Lord
loses the benefits of his fines and amercements, and in time
may totally be divested of the whole jurisdiction and profit of
his Leet, of which inconveniences some Lords are less sensible
because they never knew the true value and benefit of this
jurisdiction." 2 On the other hand, as evidence that these
Courts had not become a negligible quantity, we may note
that the celebrated " Orders and Directions " of the Privy
Council of 1630 definitely placed no small share of the
responsibility for the enforcement of local police regulations
upon the Stewards of the Lord's Courts. 8 These Courts had,
indeed, still so much vitality in 1659 that an ardent Utopian
of that date thought it necessary to propose " that all Lords of
Manors keeping constant Courts Baron and Courts Leet or
either of them shall discontinue the same, and shall have the
value of the profits of their Courts," on a ten years' average,
paid to them out of public funds ; whilst it was also to be
1 13 and 14 Charles II. o. 12, sec. 15.
2 Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, by Sir Henry Chauncy, 1700, p. 100.
3 Among these "Orders and Directions" were the following: "That
Stewards to Lords and Gentlemen, in keeping their Leets twice a year, do
specially inquire upon those articles that tend to the reformation or punishment
of common offences and abuses : as of Bakers and Brewers for breaking of
Assizes ; of Forestallers and Regraters ; against Tradesmen of all sorts for selling
with under weights, or at excessive prices, or things unwholesome, or things
made in deceipt. Of people, breakers of houses ; common thieves and their
receivers ; haunters of Taverns or Alehouses ; those that go in good clothes
and fare well, and none know whereof they live ; those that be night-walkers ;
builders of Cottages and takers in of inmates ; offences of Victuallers, Artificers,
Workmen, and Labourers. That the petty Constables in all Parishes be chosen
of the abler sort of Parishioners, and the office not to be put upon the poorer
sort, if it may be : Watching in the night and Warding by day, and to be
appointed in every Town and Village for apprehension of rogues and vagabonds
and for safety and good order" (MS. Register, Privy Council, 1631 ; Orders
and Directions, together with a Commission for the Better Administration of
Justice, 1630 ; see The State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, 1797, vol. i. p. 156 ;
History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, by C. J. Ribton-Turner, 1887, p. 152 ;
Early Histoi-y of English Poor Relief , by E. M. Leonard, 1900, p. 158).
ii8 THE COURT IN RUINS
ordained that " all Hundred Courts " were " to cease, and to
be for ever hereafter discontinued." l And we have indirect
evidence of the continued activity of the Lord's Court in the
fact that neither the Minutes of Vestries nor the orders of
Petty and Quarter Sessions during the seventeenth century
contain, so far as we have noticed, any references to the
appointments of Constables by the Justices. 2 The proceedings
of the Middlesex Justices at the end of the seventeenth and
the beginning of the eighteenth century contain, indeed,
frequent references to the Constables appointed, not by the
Justices but by the various Lord's Courts. In 1727 Parlia-
ment expressly directed the Turnpike Act of that year " to be
read at every Leet." 3 Even as late as 1788-1793 we find
the Quarter Sessions of Somersetshire and Oxfordshire thinking
it worth while formally to recommend " to Lords of Leets "
and " to Stewards of Courts " that they should take care to
appoint none but efficient and trustworthy Constables. 4
Nevertheless, though thousands of Manorial Courts were
being held, no student of the records can fail to become aware,
from the very beginning of the eighteenth century, that these
ancient tribunals were being rapidly superseded by other
forms of social organisation. To take first the Court Baron
side. The progress of enclosure during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries must have greatly diminished the
business of the Courts. The lack of any standing administra-
tive machinery, and of explicit Corporate rights to the land
even the absence of publicity and the want of Corporate
personality and perpetual succession disabled the tenants of
the Manor and the Jury of the Court from withstanding the
constant pressure for the substitution of complete individual
ownership for the ancient communal management of the
cornfields and the hay meadows. In the course of the
eighteenth century, the rapid succession of Inclosure Acts, of
1 Chaos, an interesting anonymous scheme for reconstruction, 1659, p.
26.
2 In 1706, in the Vestry of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, "the Foreman of the
Leet Jury is desired to move the Court that another Constable and Headborough
be added for the first and second divisions of the parish " (Account of the
Hospital and Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, by J. Parton, 1822, p. 282).
8 1 George II. c. 19.
* MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Somerset, Epiphany, 1788 ; Bristol Gazette,
24th January 1788 ; Oxford Journal, 18th May 1793
PREVALENCE AND DECA Y OF THE LORD'S COURT 119
which, between 1689 and 1835, over 4000 were passed, 1
deprived thousands of Manorial Courts of their business
connected with the co-operative management of agriculture,
which had once formed so large a part of the Local Govern-
ment of the village. 2 Along with this agricultural revolution
must be noted the steady decline in the number of copyholds
and customary freeholds, which in Sir Edward Coke's time
had made up one-third of England, 8 but which, in the course
of the next two centuries, were always becoming enfranchised
into complete freeholds, or merged in larger properties. There
remained to many a Court Baron only one public function,
that of the decision of petty actions for debt and trespass. But
the " Homage " of freeholders and copyholders, even when free-
holders and copyholders still attended the Lord's Court, hardly
afforded the best judicial tribunal for civil suits. Moreover,
in the vast majority of Manors there came to be no freehold
tenants liable to escheat to the Lord, and the copyholders
shrunk up in number, or entirely ceased to exist. Whether
or not from this cause, the hearing of petty debt cases was
generally discontinued ; 4 and we see this function passing
1 Report of House of Commons Committee on Agricultural Distress, 1836,
p. 501.
2 " A strangely large proportion of the Inclosure Acts . . . sounded the
death -knell each for one Manorial Court" (North Riding Quarter Sessions
Records, by Rev. J. C. Atkinson, vol. vii. p. xxiii). It must be remembered that,
over a large part of England, the enclosure of the commonfields had taken place
without statutory authority (see The Domesday of Inclosures, 1517-1518, by
I. S. Leadam (Royal Historical Society, 1897); "The Movements for the In-
closure and Preservation of Open Lands," by Sir R. Hunter, in Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society, June 1897). Of the 2000 Inclosure Acts of the
eighteenth century, a large proportion related to south-east England ; and this
is true, though to a lesser extent, of the 2000 Acts of 1800-1835. These
Inclosure Acts, and the facts with which they deal, have, until lately, escaped
proper study. Much light is thrown upon them by the work of Dr. Gilbert
Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Comrnonfields (1907).
3 Bagnall v. Tucker, in Reports of Divers Choice Cases, etc., by R. Brown-
low, 1675, vol. ii. p. 156 ; Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition,
1825, voL i. p. 6.
4 The history of petty debt courts does not fall within our scope, but we
may mention that we have found it impossible (as we did also in the analogous
cases of the County Courts and Hundred Courts) to form any idea of the extent
to which the Manorial Courts continued actually to serve in this capacity
between 1689 and 1835, or how they fulfilled this duty. Our first impression
was that this particular function of the Lord's Court had become almost entirely
disused. Thus we find the Privy Council in 1664 establishing, by a grant
under the Great Seal, "a Court of Record to try small actions," in response to
a petition from the inhabitants of Stepney and Hackney, who alleged that these
Manova formed "a Liberty exempt both from the Sheriff's Bailiffs or the Knight
tio THE COURT IN RUINS
silently away to the " Courts of Conscience " or " Courts of
Bequests," established by particular statutes of the eighteenth
century. Presently the Lord's Court, as a Court Baron, in
distinction from a Customary Court and a Court Leet, comes
to be held only in the exceptional cases (such as Epworth)
Marshal's men " (MS. Acts of Privy Council, 14th and 21st September 1664).
The Manorial Courts were not mentioned, although we know that they were
held ; and we can only assume that they did not then deal with pleas of debt.
We read indeed, in 1728, that "of late this authority is seldom executed in some
Manors, for that Courts Baron, which at first were held every three weeks, are
now held no oftener than Courts Leet, viz. twice in the year. But . . . many
Manors still retain their ancient power and authority in this particular "
(Practice of Courts Leet and Courts Baron, by Sir William Scroggs, 4th edition,
1728, pp. 195-200). Further investigation into Manor records showed us that
a large number of Courts continued in vigorous activity as petty debt tribunals.
In not a few cases (as we have mentioned in the case of Bamburgh, Northumber-
land) we find tenants of the Manor fined for venturing to take their petty debt
cases to any other tribunal. In 1774 we hear that the Court Baron sits every
three weeks in the Manor of Trematon, Cornwall, and we see its Bailiff arresting
a defendant who had been condemned to pay over 14 for damages and costs.
On appeal its action was upheld by the King's Bench (Rowland v. Veale, in
Reports of Cases by H. Cowper, 1783, pp. 18-22). "Down to about 1800,"
says the historian of an Oxfordshire Manor, "it appears from the Court books
cognisance was taken of causes under forty shillings at Courts held in Bampton "
(History of Bampton, by J. A. Giles, 1st edition, 1847, p. 104). On the other
hand, when, in 1764, the Lord of the Manor of Warrington, Cheshire, sought
to revive the jurisdiction in civil suits, his action seems to have been resisted
as an innovation (Annals of the Lords of Warrington and Bewsey from 1587,
by W. Beamont, 1873, pp. 116-117). We see the civil suits gradually falling
into desuetude in the Manor of Havering atte Bower in Essex, where its Court, in
1822, had heard no pleas of debt since 1776, none of replevin since 1790, and
none of ejectment since 1806 ; but was, as we have already mentioned, never-
theless required by the Court of King's Bench in 1822 to entertain a petty debt
suit (R. v. Steward of Havering atte Bower; see p. 18). So, in 1817, the
Court Baron of the great Manor of Wakefield, Yorkshire, was found in full
activity as a civil debt court (Holroyd v. Breare and Holmes, in Reports of Cases,
etc., by R. V. Barnewall and E. H. Alderson, 1822, vol. ii. p. 473). Up and down
the country, it is clear, there were, especially in the North of England, scores
of such Courts still hearing pleas of debt and trespass up to forty shillings,
right down to the reign of Victoria. Yet so little was heard of them that it
could be said by a great authority in 1825 that actions were at that date "now
very rarely, indeed, if ever brought" in the Court Baron (Treatise on Copyholds,
by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825, vol. ii. p. 382). In 1833 these tribunals
were included in the inquiries of a Royal Commission, and they were incident-
ally reported as deciding civil actions in scores of places from Northumberland
to Cornwall (Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Courts of Common Law,
1833, pp. 6, 20, 69, 77, 103, 133, 146, 191, etc.). In 1840 a return describes
more than fifty Courts Baron in Northumberland, more than a score in Durham,
half a dozen in Yorkshire, half a dozen in Wales, and half a. dozen elsewhere
(besides Hundred Courts, Honour Courts, and Borough Courts), still acting as
petty debt Courts, and dealing, in some instances, with hundreds of pleas
annually (House of Commons Return of Courts of Request, 1840). The
County Courts Act of 1846 (9 and 10 Vic. c. 95) allowed Lords to surrender
their civil jurisdictions, to be merged in the new County Courts ; and the
amending Act of 1867 (30 and 31 Vic. c. 142) formally deprived them of any
PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT 121
" where a body of freeholders have a set of customs relating
to fines, heriots, regulation of commons, and the like, resembling
the customs of copyhold tenants." *
The Court Leet function of the Manorial Court the
suppression of public nuisances, the enforcement of personal
obligations, and the appointment of police officers was
simultaneously being eaten into by newer forms of social
organisation. After the first quarter of the seventeenth century
we do not find Parliament conferring any jurisdiction upon
outstanding jurisdiction in matters falling within thatf of these Courts (Treatise
on the Law of Copyholds, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 434 ; see article
in Nineteenth Century, October 1897 ; A History of English Law, by Prof.
W. S. Holdsworth, 1903, p. 418).
1 Law of Copyholds, by C. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd edition,
1893, p. 300. Where the Lord's Court has long since abandoned any functions
of Local Government, and has become purely formal, we sometimes find it still
making presentments of encroachments on the ' ' Waste " of the Manor. Thus
in the records of the "General Court Baron" of the Manor of Titburst and
Kendalls in Hertfordshire (access to which we owe to the kindness of Mr. E. C.
Phillimore), though any local government work had long before fallen into
desuetude, we find, on 22nd June 1801, two presentments of persons making
enclosures of the waste of the Manor. So at Barnes (Surrey), where the Lord's
Court is still (1906) held, we read of a proclamation of the Court on 27th July
1894 against a tenant illegally digging gravel, and of his being "fined" 50
by the Lord of the Manor (History of the Parish of Barnes, by J. E. Anderson,
1900, p. 11).
More usually the Lord's Court became simply an opportunity for recording
alienations of copyhold property, when a complacent Steward entertained at
dinner a score of the Lord's tenantry. The Court was sometimes revived for
this purpose after long desuetude. Thus " the Reeve and Constable of the Leet
of Tunstall, . . . important civil officers in their day," had apparently ceased to
be appointed after 1691. "But in the year 1826," the Lord's Court "was
revived and has been since held annually as an audit for chief rents, for swear-
ing in Constables, etc., and as a festive meeting and bond of connection between
the Lord and his tenants" (The Borough of Stoke on Trent, by John Ward,
1843, p. 78). It is interesting to note that as early as three centuries ago the
dinner had already become an important part of the ceremony. At Worplesdon
(Surrey) the customs of the Manor formally recite that "the Homage and
officers attending the Court and the Lawday have their dinner at the Queen's
charge," the Queen owned the Manor, "but on a special Court at the charge
of the party desiring it." Similarly, at Dymock (Gloucestershire), Whiston
and Claines (Worcestershire), Alvechurch (ditto), and many other Manors. In
the Manor of Earl's Court (Middlesex), it is expressly provided that "any
tenant may call a Court at his own charge, without suit unto the Lord ; the
Steward and tenants to have their dinner provided and the Steward to be
pleased for his pains" (Treatise on Copyholds, by C. Watkins, 4th edition, 1825,
pp. 487, 545, 548, 549, 559). In the Manor of Bishopstoke (Hants), in 1752,
the Jury "present that the Lord Bishop of the Manor ought at every Court
to find and allow unto the Jury and Homage a dinner of plain butcher's meat
and something in moderation to drink, in lieu of the pains and trouble they are
at in attending and doing the business of the same Court, agreeably to the
customs of this and other Manors belonging to the bishopric" (MS. Manor
Rolls, Bishopstoke, 1752).
1 22 THE CO URT IN R UINS
the Court Leet. 1 From the very beginning of the eighteenth
century we become aware of the rapid supersession of its
functions, sometimes by new statutory bodies of Street
Commissioners or Turnpike Trustees to be hereafter de-
scribed ; sometimes by the Vestry of the Parish ; sometimes
by the Justices of the County. The presentments at the
Lord's Court become steadily more perfunctory, often de-
generating into a careless return of " omnia bene," or, as
in a Welsh Manor in 1804, "all well but the pigs." 2
In some large and relatively populous parishes, such as
Woolwich and Tooting, we see the Vestry assuming the
right to pass the By-laws which elsewhere would have been
considered the business of the Lord's Court. 8 In the same
years the Middlesex Justices in Quarter Sessions were taking
upon themselves freely to quash particular appointments of
Constables made by the Lord's Courts, discharging some
persons 4 and appointing others as they thought fit. Towards
the end of the eighteenth century it is not uncommon to find
Vestries nominating Constables. Presently their appoint-
ment by the Justices, in default of the Lord's Court, became
the common form. In 1800, for instance, we gather that in
the extensive district of the Newport Three Hundreds of
Buckinghamshire, there were only four parishes in which the
Constables were still appointed at the Lord's Court. 8 By
1829 we are told that " Petty Constables, though sometimes
appointed in Court Leet according to ancient practice, and
occasionally sworn into office either by the Lord of such
1 The last instance is 21 James I. c. 21 (1623), as to innkeepers' offences.
8 MS. Manor Roll, Maenol (in Diocese of Bangor), 1804, among the archives
of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.
3 See our preceding volume, The Parish and the County, pp. 56-60, 105, etc.
4 In contrast, we may note that when, in 1652, a Constable for the Hundred
of King's Wimborne in Hampshire complained to the Judge at Assizes that he
had not been relieved of his office, though his year had expired, the Court would
not do more than direct the Steward for the Manor of King's Wimborne to
choose another person (MS. Circuit Books, Western Circuit, 9th July 1662).
6 These were Bow, Brickhill, Castlethorpe, Haversham, and Stoke Ham-
mond. The words "Court Leet "are written against these in MS. Minutes,
Quarter Sessions, Buckinghamshire, Easter, 1800. Nevertheless in Gloucester-
shire, and doubtless elsewhere, every appointment by the Justices continued for-
mally to be made only ' ' until the Lord of the Leet shall hold his Court and
appoint another in his stead " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Gloucestershire,
Epiphany, 1825 ; see for a similar form, A Guide to the Practice of the Court of
Quarter Sessions for the County of Somerset, by John Jesse, Junior, 1815, p. 22),
PREVALENCE AND DEC A Y OF THE LORD'S COURT 123
Court or by Justices out of session, are now generally
nominated by their respective Parish Vestries, and sworn
into office by the Justices at the Quarter Sessions, which is,
on every account, the better and more regular mode." l " In
the rural districts," wrote Chadwick only a few years later,
"the Courts Leet have generally fallen into desuetude." 2 Here
and there some valuable source of revenue kept the Lord's
Court alive right down to Victorian times ; it might be, as
in the case of the Great Court of the Manor of Wakefield,
the right to inspect and exact fees for standardising the
weights and measures over an area of 230 square miles; 8
it might, as at Bradford, 4 Devonport, 6 and various other
places, be a profitable market, with its power to levy toll ;
it might, as at Farringdon in Berkshire, be a prescriptive
right to levy a " toll traverse " on cheese and corn arriving
in the Manor; 6 or it might, as at Manchester, Leeds, Wake-
1 Practical Guide to the Quarter Sessions, by W. Dickinson and T. N. Tal-
fourd, 1829, p. 60.
2 Poor Law Commissioners' General Report on the Sanitary Condition of the
Labouring Population, 1842, p. 296.
3 See Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, by W. P. Baildon, vol. i.
(1274-1297), 1901 ; History of Wakefield, by Thomas Taylor, 1886. The
Manorial rights to this inspection of weights and measures, when actually exer-
cised, were preserved in 22 and 23 Vic. c. 56, sec. 10 (1859), and 41 and 42 Vic.
c. 49, sec. 49 (1878). The Act 55 and 56 Vic. c. 18 enabled local authorities
to buy out the owners of such rights. The West Riding County Council had to
pay 5000 in compensation in 1892 to get the function into its own hands (Our
Weights and Measures, by H. J. Chaney, 1897, pp. 54-55). In the Manors of
St. Giles-in-the-Fields and Stepney, Middlesex, the Manorial officers continued
to be chosen for this purpose during the eighteenth century, and to levy fees and
fines on persons using faulty weights and measures. These rights were upheld
in the Court of King's Bench ; see Duke of Bedford v. Alcock, 1 Wils. 248 ;
Sheppard v. Hall in Reports of Cases, etc., by R. V. Barnewall and J. L. Adolphus,
1833, vol. iii. p. 433 ; Morning Advertiser, 4th January 1806 ; Treatise on Copy-
holds, by John Scriven, 7th edition, 1896, p. 435. Similar jurisdictions con-
tinued to be exercised in these and other London Manors during the early part
of the nineteenth century (see, for instance, a case in Clerkenwell, in 1832,
Wilcock v. Windsor and Others, in Reports of Cases, etc., by R. V. Barnewall and
J. L. Adolphus, 1833, vol. iii. pp. 43-50).
4 Historical Notes on the Bradford Corporation, by W. Cudworth, 1881,
citing the case, Rawson v. Wright, in which this monopoly was successfully
maintained in 1825.
6 It is interesting to note that at Devonport, where the market yielded to
the Lord of the Manor in 1830 a profit of nearly 3000 a year, the Lord's Court
continued to appoint annually twelve "Constables for the Manor," even after
the local Justices in Petty Sessions had taken to appointing fifteen Constables of
their own (Brindley's Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse Directory, 1830).
8 In this case the Lord of the Manor in 1822 successfully maintained his
right to exact and distrain summarily for sixpence on every ton of cheese and a
124 THE COURT IN RUINS
field, Bradford, and Ossett, be a Soke Mill, in which the Lord
had known how to maintain a lucrative monopoly. 1
It is, of course, impossible to ascribe to any one cause,
or to assign to any one year, the setting in of the decay of
the Lord's Court as an organ of Local Government. Just as
no statute had created it, or endowed it with jurisdiction, so
no statute ever abolished it, or even abrogated its powers.
Its gradual fading away was, in fact, spread over several
centuries. The persistent hostility of the King's Courts at
Westminster, to be" traced even in the thirteenth century,
became specially accentuated in Sir Edward Coke, and
was strengthened by the influences of the Commonwealth,
which gave a shake to all feudal forms from which they
never recovered. But apart from this disfavour of the
King's Courts, at all times the jealous rivals of local juris-
dictions, and apart from the disintegrating influences of seven-
teenth-century politics, the very ideas on which the Court
of the Manor was based became ever more out of harmony
with the new conceptions of social organisation. The
principle of Government by the Common Agreement of the
persons immediately concerned the principle which lay at
the root of such local autonomy as existed in the Court
Baron was ever more undermined by the growing tendency
to base all civil relations on the strictly ascertained legal
rights of the individual as an individual. Moreover, the
Common Agreement on which the Court Baron rested was,
as we have mentioned, essentially that of an Association of
Producers, enjoying in individual ownership the use of the
land, coupled with the power to levy taxes on the landless
residents, who presently became the bulk of the population,
and naturally resented their exclusion.
The Court Leet side of the Manorial Court was, as we may
now see, equally out of harmony with the ideas and the needs
of the eighteenth century. The limitation of the Leet to
penny on every quarter of corn ; he had in return to maintain market-house,
lock-up house, pound, two pairs of stocks, and the stalls of the market ; to
provide a brass bushel measure, and to repair half a bridge over the Thames
(Rickards v. Bennett and Another, 1822, in Reports of Cases, etc., by J. Dow-
ling and A. Ryland, 1823, vol. ii. pp. 389-398).
1 History of Committing, by R. Bennett and J. Elton, 1898-1904, vol. iii.
cbap. viii., " Feudal Laws and Customs."
PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT 125
yearly or half-yearly meetings was specially inapplicable to
the suppression of urban nuisances. 1 Its whole procedure, in
its successive stages of presentment, amercement, affeering, and
distraining for small fines was cumbrous and often ineffective ;
and the absence of any provision against a recurrence of the
offence gave the locality the very minimum of protection.
But we suggest that the break-up of the Court Leet is to be
attributed, in the main, to the abandonment by the English
people of the root-principle on which the Court depended.
This principle, to put it shortly, was that, however men might
differ in faculties or desires, they were all under an equal
obligation to serve the community, by undertaking, in turn, all
the offices required for its healthy life. This principle is
manifested in the annual nomination of officers, their com-
pulsory service, and its limitation to a single year. It is seen
in the supremacy of the Jury, taken haphazard from the
neighbours, and deciding, without experts, and even without
witnesses, " on their own view and knowledge." It lies at the
base of the usual absence of any permanent staff or Corporate
revenue, and of the inability to see the necessity for more
frequent meetings of the Court, or for its separation into
committees. It accounts for the fact that Parliament was
disinclined to endow this shifting Jury and perpetually
changing group of amateur officers with any new functions,
even if it ever occurred to any year's Court to ask for new
powers, to be executed in future years by successive new
groups of jurymen and officers whose character no one could
foresee. We may recognise a noble element in this idea of
universal equality of social obligation the opposite, be it
observed, of the eighteenth-century idea of universal equality
of civil and political rights. But when this universal equality
of social obligation meant each citizen taking, in turn, an
" equal and identical " share in the service of the community,
it proved impracticable for any but the most primitive society.
Division of labour, implying specialisation of structure and
1 The Court might have sat more frequently by the device of adjournment,
but this was a device it seldom learned to use, and which had certainly not been
contemplated in Magna Carta. In a case in 1832, an adjournment of a Court
Leet from May to December was held to be not improper (Wilcock v. Windsor
and Others, in Reports of Cases, etc., by R. V. Barnewall and J. L. Adolphus,
1833, vol. iii. pp. 43-50).
126 THE COURT IN RUINS
function, became in fact a necessity of progress. Yet the
twentieth-century student will perhaps regret that it was not
the element of an identical equality, but the very notion of
social obligation itself, which was swept away by the rival
panacea of universality of civil and political rights.
CHAPTER III
THE MANOKIAL BOROUGH
WE have now to describe a somewhat heterogeneous collection
of local governing authorities which appear to us to be inter-
mediate between the Lord's Court and the autonomous
Municipal Corporation creating its own Justices of the Peace.
The bulk of these authorities are plainly " Manorial " in their
constitution. They are made up of such familiar parts as
the Jury of Presentment, nominating or appointing Reeves,
Constables, and other officers ; they transact the public business
at " Courts," called indifferently Leets, Views of Frankpledge,
Courts Baron, Courts of Pleas, Courts of Record, Three Weeks'
Courts, or Burghmotes; they exercise seignorial powers over
the inhabitants at large often absorbing indeed all the
privileges of the Lord. They are frequently, we might almost
say usually, termed " Boroughs " or " Free Boroughs." But we
shall find, as Professor Maitland indicates, that " the Borough
community will be closely related to the village community." l
In some instances the so-called Boroughs are members of the
seignorial Hierarchies of Courts that we have already described.
In other places they are merely the urban parts of large
Manors, becoming, by the grant of a measure of autonomy,
what we shall term " Lord's Boroughs," the rest of the Manor
being often designated " the Foreign." In a small minority of
cases we find functions analogous to those of the Lord's
Borough exercised by rudimentary authorities, which, so far as
the accessible evidence is concerned, cannot actually be proved
to have ever had any connection with a Lord's Court. But all
these authorities, whether demonstrably seignorial in origin, or
1 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, p. 51.
127
128 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
doubtfully so, occupy, between 1689 and 1835, a similar
position in the local government of the country, between the
Parish and its officers on the one hand, and the Lord-Lieutenant,
High Sheriff, and Justices of the County on the other. Hence
we group the whole of these authorities under the loose
designation of Manorial Boroughs a phrase which we use
merely to distinguish them from the Municipal Corporations
empowered to create their own Corporate Justices of the Peace. 1
We must leave it to the historian of the Manor to decide
whether some of the authorities which, between 1689 and
1835, fell within this class are appropriately designated
" Manorial." In order that the student may bear this
reservation in mind, we begin with those instances which seem
to have least connection with the Lord's Court, and in which
the constitutional structure is most rudimentary.
(a) The Village Meeting
The most rudimentary it may possibly be the least
significant of quasi-manorial administrations existing in 1689
were the recurring village meetings, unchartered and unnamed,
that regulated the commonfield agriculture, the town's plough,
the customary privilege of gleaning, 2 the bull and boar, the
common herd, the pasturage on the commons and the waste,
and sometimes the quarry and the fishing grounds, without
any obvious relation to any Lord of the Manor. No one has
yet explored the extent to which such customary sharings of
user of land, with or without legal ownership, have existed
1 We know of no general description of the class of local authorities that
we term Manorial Boroughs. The phrase "Manorial Corporations" was used
in the analytic index and tables of the Municipal Corporation Commission's
Report, 1835-1838, to designate some of the towns which they excluded from
their list of Municipal Corporations ; but they did not define its scope. Their
separate reports on such of the Manorial Boroughs as they investigated, together
with those of the Commission of 1876-1880, are the principal accessible
materials ; but, as will be seen, we have made great use of the MS. archives of
such towns as Alnwick, Alresford, Altrincham, Aruudel, Beccles, Birmingham,
Christchurch, Godmanchester, Lymington, Tetbury, and Wisbech ; and of the
local histories. See also Miss Bateson's articles in English, Historical Eeview,
1900-1902 ; and her Borough Customs (Selden Society, 1904 and 1906).
2 The gleaning rules of Helpston in Lincolnshire in 1722 seem to have been
the following: "That no person shall glean peas or beans till the peas or
beans be carried by the owners thereof, nor to carry away grain in sheets or
blankets, but to glean in bands only " (Fenland Notes and Queries, vok iii. p. 304).
THE VILLAGE MEETING 129
up and down England and Wales ; nor enumerated the
different forms under which some assembly or committee of
the " commorants " arranged for the enjoyment of these
" dolewoods " or " oxgangs," these " cattlegates " or " sheep-
heaves," these " stints " and " horseleazes," these " pasturegates "
and " cowsgrasses." 1
An interesting example of village government of this sort
is afforded by the little village of Berwick in Sussex. Here,
as we gather, nothing in the nature of a Manorial Court has
been held for centuries. The inhabitants in 1721 are found
governing themselves by voluntary agreement, then embodied
in writing, in which the Eector joins. The arable fields,
known as " tenantry-land," were unenclosed, and owned in
severalty in the usual scattered strips. We have no record
of decisions, like those of the Lord's Court of Great Tew, as
to the crops to be sown. But each owner was to contribute
a certain quota of sheep 2 to a common flock, to be placed
in charge of a shepherd, and folded on the cornfields after
a certain date. From information that we have gathered
privately, we learn that, for the pasture lands, the Commoners
cast lots annually for the parts of the common meadow they
were severally to use during the ensuing year. As it was
not thought seemly for the Eector to cast lots, he was allowed
to use always the lot next to the brook. These rights to use
the common lands seem to have been gradually bought up
and exchanged by the principal landowner. But to this day
(1907), as we are informed by the daughter of the late
incumbent, the Parish Clerk has, by virtue of his office,
the right to turn out one bullock upon what was formerly
a commonfield, between certain fixed dates in the year ; and
this " right " is annually purchased from him by the farmer
of those particular fields. 3
Another curious survival is seen in the ancient village of
1 See the Law of Copyholds, by C. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, 2nd
edition, 1893, p. 16.
2 "Agreed that the sheep that are stocked for the Tye shall be stocked in
this proportion, namely [the Rector] 16 for his privileges there ; Widow Godly,
16 ; S. Stace, 8 ; Thomas Susan, 14 ; and those which have no land but their
privileges shall keep only 3 ewes to their privileges, and no more."
s "Berwick Parochial Records," by Rev. G. M. Cooper, in Sussex Archaeo-
logical Collections, vol. vi., 1853, pp. 240-241 ; supplemented by private
information.
VOL. II. PT. I K
130 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Yarnton in Oxfordshire, where there are three so-called "Lot
Meadows," containing over 200 acres of valuable hay-fields.
These have, time out of mind, been divided among the two
tithe owners and the thirteen owners of shares, some of which
are still appurtenant to neighbouring farms, whilst others
are held by persons neither owning nor farming land. What
is interesting is that, with the exception of the two " tidals "
or " tithals," the shares of the co-owners, although all bearing
distinct names, such as " Dun," " William of Bladon," " Eothe,"
etc., and dealt with as incorporeal hereditaments, are not repre-
sented by any definite pieces of land, but only by the right
to draw lots annually for a thirteenth part in each of the
" drafts " or sections into which the fields are then and there
divided. The following description is by one who witnessed
in 1905 a ceremony that was plainly of ancient usage :
" On the day on which the meadows are appointed to be
drawn . . . the Headsman meets the owners of these shares
at the tidals in Oxhey. He has with him a bag containing
thirteen boxwood balls of about 1^ in. in diameter, on each
of which is written the name of one of these shares. At the
first post, one of those present dips his hand into the bag
and withdraws one of the balls ; the name on the ball is
called out, and a man with a scythe cuts half a dozen swathes
to make a bare place, on which the owner of the lot cuts his
initial. The whole company then walks on to the next stake,
and a second ball is withdrawn. The man with the scythe
again cuts half a dozen swathes, and the owner cuts his
initial in the turf; and the performance is repeated till all
the thirteen balls have been withdrawn, and every one of the
thirteen owners has obtained his lot in the first draft. . . .
In order to divide the lots, a man walks through the high
grass from one post to the corresponding post on the other
side of the field, and the track thus trodden shows the boundary.
... It is obvious that this is the best way to divide the
growing grass on unenclosed meadows. Every owner has his
lot in each of the eight drafts, and the chance of the lot
renders it most improbable that one man will get the pick
of the field while his neighbour gets all the worst portions.
As one of the farmers present said to me, ' They must have
been clever old folk who thought this out.' To show how
THE VILLAGE MEETING 131
the lot works out, it will be sufficient to state that the owner
of the share called Dun drew Lot 1 in the first draft of Oxhey,
9 in the second, 12 in the third, 4 in the first draft of the
West Mead, 3 in the second, 1 1 in the third, 1 1 in the fourth,
and 8 in the fifth." l
Similar village organisations connected with common
agricultural interests may be found by the explorer in other
parts of England. 2 It is, however, rare to find them getting
1 "Till the beginning of the last century all three fields had to be cut the
same day as they were drawn ; Oxhey on the first Monday after old St. Peter's
Day, West Mead on the second Monday, and Pixey on the third. This custom
was the cause of much disturbance and riot : outside labour had to be employed,
and there was an influx of disorderly harvesters into the village ; but, in 1817,
the vicar of Yarnton persuaded all parties to agree to a change, allowing the
grass to be cut at any time before the cattle are turned into the meadow.
"The owner of each complete share is entitled to turn on to the meadows
ten beasts after the grass is cut, but in so doing he must be careful to send no
sheep or entire animals. The meadows are thrown open for stock on the
Monday after August 12th, but there appears to be no rule fixing the date
when the meadows are again laid up for hay ; in practice it is found, however,
that as the meadows are very liable to floods, the cattle begin to lose flesh
before the end of October, and they are, therefore, taken off" (" Lot Meadows,
an interesting survival," by Adolphus Ballard, Country Life, 18th Nov.
1905 ; see also Three Oxfordshire Parishes, by Mrs. Staple ton, Oxford Historical
Society, 1893, pp. 307-310). " Traces of a similar sharing of meadows by lot are
said to be found to-day in the Lammas grounds in Hackney Marshes ; and old
deeds of the thirteenth century in the chartulary of Godstow speak of Lot
meadows at Cassington, the adjacent parish to Yarnton, and at Bletchingdon
in the Cherwell Valley. The St. Frideswide's chartulary speaks of Lot meadows
at Eynsham, which is the next parish to Cassington. "
We have already mentioned elsewhere the common organisation of the four
villages in Northamptonshire that share among them the Ashe Meadow ;
appointing six "Fieldmen" to lay out the meadow in lots, which were drawn
for at an annual gathering, and mown under the direction of "Crocusmen"
(History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, by John Bridges, 1791, vol. i.
p. 219 ; The Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, p. 269). Similar
lot meadows existed at Bestmoor (Oxon) ; see The English Peasantry and the
Enclosure of Common Fields, by Gilbert Slater, 1907, p. 35.
2 For instance, near the villages of Congresbury and Puxton in Somerset,
there was, down to 1811, an extensive common, called the Dolmoors, running
into both the parishes, the householders of which had the right of pasturage.
This common was divided into twenty-four parts, and was managed by two
officers, called Overseers of the Dolmoors, who served for one year and then
nominated their successors. Every year, on the Saturday before Midsummer
Day, a meeting was held in Puxton Church, by sound of bell, in the early
morning, at which the villagers attended. The business was to draw lots for the
privilege of having the use of twenty-three of the parts for the ensuing year,
and to let by auction, by "inch of candle," the twenty-fourth part, "the
Outdrift " or " the Outlet," for a sum of money varying from about one to three
pounds, which was devoted to defraying the incidental expenses of the year.
This ancient custom was only terminated by the 1816 award under the Inclosure
Act of 1811 (History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, by J. Collinson,
1791 ; Delineations of the North- West Division of the County of Somersetshire
1 32 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
beyond the undeviating maintenance of an ancient custom,
without other administrative machinery than a public meeting
and an officer the " Headsman," Common Herd, Fieldsman,
or " Overseer," paid by customary fees or contributions. 1
But "between village and Borough," as Professor Maitland
tells us, " there is no insuperable gulf, and if our villages had
* remained lordless they might perhaps in course of time have
exhibited the decisive symptoms of Corporate unity." 2
The first step in such an evolution might be the establish-
ment of a standing committee. Of this the leading case is
that of Aston and Cote, 3 two hamlets in the parish of
Bampton, Oxfordshire, where the commoners had, time out of
mind, down to Victorian days, maintained a " Sixteens," or
standing administrative committee, on which each served in
turn, every four yardlands annually furnishing one member.
This body, as we learn from the case which the Lord of the
Manor submitted to Counsel in 1657, had, from time
immemorial, been accustomed " to make orders, set penalties,
choose officers, and lot the meadows, and do all such things as
are usually performed or done in the Courts Baron of other
by J. Rutter, 1829, p. 36 ; The Sea-Board of Mendip, by F. A. Knight,
1902, pp. 228-232 ; The Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, pp. 268-
269 ; Archceologia, vol. xxxv. p. 471 ; Notes and Queries for Somerset and
Dorset, vol. vi. p. 109).
1 We ought not to forget that Domesday Book itself testifies to the existence
of some entirely "lordless" villages (Domesday Book and Beyond, by F. W.
Maitland, 1897, p. 133 ; The Domesday Inquest, by A. Ballard, 1906, pp. 138,
146 ; article by J. H. Round in Victoria County History of Hertfordshire, vol. i.
1905). Moreover, it seems worth considering whether some of these apparently
autonomous village organisations may not have been, as the ' ' berewicks " of
Domesday possibly were, colonies or off-shoots from a Manor, forming distinct
agricultural units in new settlements, and gaining a practical autonomy as
they removed from the parent stock (see Domesday Book and Beyond, by F. W.
Maitland, 1897, p. 114 ; The Growth of the Manor, by P. Vinogradoff, 1905,
p. 224 ; History of Municipal Government in Liverpool, by Ramsay Muir, 1906,
p. 3 ; article by F. M. Stenton in Victoria County History of Derbyshire, vol. i.,
1905, p. 311). 2 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitlaud, 1898, p. 35.
3 For the discussion of this interesting case, see Professor F. W. Maitland's
article, ' ' The Survival of Archaic Communities, " in Law Quarterly Review, vol. ix. ,
July 1893 ; The Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, pp. 158-170 ;
Villainage in England, by P. Vinogradoff, 1892, pp. 392, 450 ; History of
Bampton, by J. A. Giles, 1847, p. 79 ; The Manor and Manorial Records, by
N. J. Hone, 1906, pp. 12-13 ; Archceologia, vol. xxxiii. p. 269 and vol. xxxv.
p. 470 ; The Jurist, New Series, vol. xii. part ii. p. 103. Journal of Archaeo-
logical Institute, vol. xliv. p. 405 ; Qentleman's Magazine, 1839, vol. ii. p. 640 ;
Proceedings of Society of Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 62, vol. iii. pp. 54, 86 ; and the
Inclosure Award, 1855.
THE VILLAGE MEETING 133
Manors." The orders of the Sixteens were formally proclaimed
from the Town Cross, and were then universally accepted as
binding on the community. Four of the most influential
members of the Sixteens were annually chosen to be Grass
Stewards, and also to represent the men of Aston and Cote at
the Lord's Court of Bampton, to which the hamlets apparently
owed suit of court. The Sixteens had also to provide every
season four two -year- old bulls to run on the common pasture.
In return they were authorised to levy a fee for each cow
placed on the Common, and to sell the bulls at the end of the
season. The Sixteens appointed all the officers of the village,
allotting to each the particular share of the " Town Hams "
that custom assigned for the remuneration of the post the
Constable's Ham, the Herd's Ham, the two Water Stewards'
Hams, the Hayward's Ham, the Water Hayward's Ham, and
so on. The remainder of the " Town Hams " were " disposed
of at the discretion of the Sixteens, some for the public use of
the Town, as for making of gates, bridges, etc., and some sold
to make ale for the merry meeting of the inhabitants." We
need not in this work describe the elaborate arrangements that
were still in force in 1657 for the annual sharing out by
lot of the common meadow among the owners of strips in
the commonfield ; the gathering of the villagers under the
direction of the Grass Stewards and the Sixteens, when the
grass was ripe to cut, and the eager rushing of each man with
his scythe to mow the part allotted to him. Nor does it
enter into the plan of this work to go into the hotly debated
question of the probable origin of this remarkable organisation,
or to discuss whether it can be sufficiently accounted for by
the supposition that it represented a district shared between
three separate Manors. 1 It suffices us to note that the
1 It maybe important to trace the constitutional influence of "intercom-
moning," or the use of pasture lands more or less jointly by several villages,
parishes, or Manors ; of which traces may be found in Marshland Fen (Norfolk)
and in Lincolnshire fenlands, and also in the Essex marshes (see Domesday
Book and Beyond, by F. W. Maitland, 1897, p. 367 ; The Forest of Essex, by
W. R. Fisher, 1887, pp. 265, 277, 289 ; and the article by J. H. Round in
Victoria County History of Essex, vol. i. pp. 369-374).
We may briefly note some other cases of village organisation. " The people
of Ibthorpe," we read of a hamlet in the parish of Hurstbourn Tarrant,
Hampshire, "are Lords of their own Manor, and to this day exercise their
Manorial rights, in respect of which they have exclusive common rights on the
seventy acres of common land at Pillheath, including a right to everything that
t 3 4 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
attempt made in 1657 to reduce the inhabitants to a position
of ordinary Manorial dependence did not succeed ; and that
the rule of the Sixteens, curiously resembling, as we shall see,
that of the simplest Manorial Boroughs, continued until the
middle of the nineteenth century.
(b) The Chartered Township
If the Village Meeting, desiring legal authority for the
management of its common estate, obtained a Eoyal Charter,
it might develop, out of a rudimentary constitution analogous to
that of Aston and Cote, a form of government even approaching
a Municipal Corporation.
Among the possessions of the wealthy Abbey of St. Edmund
was a fen or marsh of 1400 acres near the village of Beccles
in Suffolk, which the Abbot had been accustomed for centuries
to let to the townsfolk, getting his annual rent from four
" Fenreeves " whom they elected at a public meeting. At the
grows on this common, with liberty to take it away for their use in Ibthorpe,
but not for sale " (Paper by Mr. T. W. Shore, in The Antiquary, vol. xvii.
p. 52, 1888 ; TJte Village Community, by G. L. Gomme, 1890, p. 260). In
other villages we find ancient regulations resting on the agreement of a public
meeting of the villagers. Thus the inhabitants of Wiuteringham in Lincoln-
shire framed in 1685 a formal code of By-laws, said to be agreed to "at a parish
meeting." "Item, 13 it was ordained, "that none shall burne or bake at any
unlawful time of night, on paine of 3/4. Item, none shall dry any hempe or
flax by the fire upon paine of 3/4. Item, none shall smoke tobacco on the streets
upon paine of 2/- for every default " (History of Winterton and the Adjoining
Villages, by W. Andrew, 1836, p. 105). Similar "fire rules" are found in
other villages, though whether promulgated at the Lord's Court or Parish Vestry
or merely by common agreement it is not easy to determine. At Helpston,
in Lincolnshire, it was ordered in 1722 that no person was to " fetch fire from
any neighbouring house without the same being carried in a lanthorn or wanning
pan, for every offence to pay ten shillings." Also it was ordered "that no
person whatsoever shall smoke tobacco in the town, street, or in any stable, barn,
or outhouse, without a sufficient muzzle, hood, or cover for the same, under the
penalty for every offence of five shillings " (Fenland Notes and Queries, vol. iii.
pp. 303-306).
Other villages had "Gild Halls" and "Town Bailiffs." At Leverington, in
the Isle of Ely, there was an ancient "Gild Hall," used latterly as free
tenements for paupers, and an annually chosen "Town Bailiff." This
distinction seems to have been due to its possession of "townlands," producing
no less than 300 a year, which were vested in trustees, one of whom served
annually as Town Bailiff (Historical Account of Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827,
p. 471 ; History of Wisbech, by K Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 503 ;
History of Wisbech, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p.- 380). It is now, with a
population in 1901 of 1124, governed by a Parish Council, with its endowments
held for charitable purposes by separate trustees.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 135
dissolution of the abbey, the townsfolk, by judicious payments
to the King, got this arrangement continued in slightly varied
form, the position being regularised by Koyal Letters Patent
and Charter of 1584 and 1605 respectively, which definitely
established a Corporate body of " the Portreeve, Surveyors, and
Commonalty of Beccles Fen." l This anomalous Corporation,
created primarily to regulate a large common pasture rather
than to govern a town, consisted of two Chambers, one of
twelve and the other of twenty-four members, each filling
vacancies by co-option. The members of the Twelve were
alone eligible to serve as Portreeve, on election by the two
Chambers of the Corporation voting together. The whole
body of the commonalty, including the members of the two
Chambers, met to enact "statutes, laws, articles, rules, and
orders touching the pasture and fen," which made up all
their property, and " also concerning the good rule, state, and
government of the Commoners of or in the same fen " who
seem to have been all the householders of Beccles, for whose
" common benefit and utility " the revenue was to be expended.
The Charter had granted or continued to this Corporation the
right to hold, quite apart from the Manorial Courts, its own
Court of Justice, the so-called " Fen Court," at which the
Portreeve and the two or three Surveyors were the judges,
and in which the principal part was played by the " Common
Clerk " of the Corporation, and by the Inquest or Jury of the
Commoners. This was a Court of Eecord for " plaints con-
cerning the Fen," having power to punish by fine or imprison-
ment, or by exclusion from "commoning in the Fen." But
neither the Portreeve nor the Corporation had ever been
granted magisterial powers or regulative authority in anything
beyond the management of the Fen.
Notwithstanding this limitation of their legal authority,
we see the Portreeve, Surveyors, and Common Council of
Beccles Fen gradually slipping into the position of administer-
1 The MS. records of the Beccles Corporation are imperfect, no book of
minutes having been found, and we were able to consult only a collection of
scraps of orders, etc., from 1719 to 1832, and various presentments, charges,
orders, etc., of the Manorial Court, 1628-1842. See also First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2133 ; Some
Account of the Corporation of Beccles Fen, 1807 ; and the History and Antiquities
of the County of Suffolk, by Rev. A. Suckling, 1846, vol. i. pp. 1-35.
136 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
ing much more than their common pasture. Their property,
which came eventually to yield over 1000 a year, made them
practically the dominant influence in this little town of a
couple of thousand inhabitants. The Lord of the Manor had,
indeed, the stallage of the market, and held his Courts a
Court Baron, a " Land Leet," l and also (for the regulation of
the fishing and navigation of the Eiver Waveney) a " Water
Leet." But the Manorial Courts evidently became very
perfunctory, the presentments of the Homage and Juries
steadily declining in number and importance, and the sessions
of the Courts becoming less frequent. 2 After the middle of
the eighteenth century, these Manorial Courts do practically
nothing but present persons to serve as Constables, Flesh-
searchers, and Ale-founders, with occasionally a Headborough.
As the need for some more regulative authority becomes felt,
we see the Corporation and its Portreeve coming more and
more to the front. Their " Fen Court " is, indeed, abandoned,
the last sessions having been in 174 1. 3 But it is the Portreeve
and his two Serjeants at Mace who enforce such of the Fen
By-laws of 1613 as are not obsolete. It is the Portreeve,
Surveyors, and Commonalty who in 1740 make the new
regulations necessitated by the growing habit of keeping geese
to supply the London market, 4 and who in 1762 revise the
stint for sojourners, "certificate -men," householders "not
paying task," and those who "pay task to the king"
respectively. 6 It is the Portreeve's Feast, provided annually
at the Corporate expense, which is the great event of the year
in Beccles. In 1785 it is the Portreeve who, by the Deputy
Steward of the Corporation and out of the Corporation funds,
prosecutes before the County Justices those inhabitants who
commit encroachments and nuisances in the streets. 6 It is
1 This "Land Leet" called its Jury "The Jury of Headborough s " (MS.
records, Beccles Manor, 23rd September 1728, 24th September 1729), which
may be compared with the Jury of Constables mentioned in The Parish and the
County, Book I. Chap. III. "The Court of Quarter Sessions," pp. 464-466.
2 Between 1750 and 1800 there were, for instance, only five "Water Leets."
3 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix,
vol. iv. p. 2138.
4 MS. records, Beccles Corporation, 31st March 1740. 5 Ibid. 1762.
6 Ibid. 1st September 1785. It is interesting to notice that, in 1760, the
Chief Constable for the Hundred of Wangford had before the Corporation of
Beccles Fen had taken up this Municipal duty presented Beccles nuisances at
Quarter Sessions (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Suffolk, 6th October 1760).
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 13?
the Corporation revenue which provides most of the relief of
the poor and maintenance of the roads. At last, in 1796,
legal authority is given to this government by a Local Act
for paving, lighting, cleaning, watching, and improving the
streets of Beccles, 1 under which the Portreeve and Surveyors,
ex officio, with several other members of the Corporation
named in the Act, were made Commissioners to carry out the
new duties, with power to levy a rate on the inhabitants.
From 1796 to 1835, when the population of the town
was increasing from 2500 to nearly 40 OO, 2 the activities of
the Corporation of Beccles Fen were indistinguishable from
those of the Beccles Street Commissioners, who were, in fact,
practically the same persons. When in 1804 the Commis-
sioners decided to pave the town, the Corporation sold part
of the Fen for 3000 to meet the cost. The payments for
watchmen, fire engines, lamps, and repairing the pavements
come sometimes out of one fund and sometimes out of another.
This was the less material in that practically all that was left
over of the Corporate income was paid " in relief of the town
for Poor, Lamp, Church, and (Highway) Composition Kates,"
this subsidy amounting, on an average, to 792 a year. 3 By
1835, in short, the Portreeve, Surveyors, and Commonalty of
Beccles Fen, originally only the managing committee of an
extensive common pasture, had, whilst letting slip even such
judicial powers as they had once exercised, assumed practically
the whole government of the town, and were accordingly
recognised as such and reformed by the Municipal Corporations
Act of 1835. 4
1 36 George III. c. 51.
2 History of Suffolk, by Rev. A. Suckling, 1846, vol. i. p. 34.
3 MS. Records, Beccles Corporation, 7th April 1831.
4 We may name here the Corporation of the ' ' Warden, Assistants, and
Commonalty " of Godalming in Surrey, incorporated by successive Royal
Charters, evidently governing the little town, but apparently entirely uncon-
nected with any of the Courts of the several Manors that existed in the parish.
Without property, taxing power, or magisterial jurisdiction its position in the
town became, already by the end of the seventeenth century, titular and
honorary only, the government passing to the Justices and to a body of Street
Commissioners established by Local Act in 1825 (First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 735 ; Parish and Church
of Godalming, by S. Welman, 1900).
Such a Corporation of " Bailiff and Burgesses " existed, too, at Great Dunmow
in Essex, under sixteenth-century Royal Charters a self-renewing Society of
Twelve, who owned the markets, collected such tolls as they could, and gave
themselves an annual feast entirely unconnected with the Manor. It remained
138 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
An even more remarkable instance of the development of
a committee for managing a landed estate into something very
near to a fully developed Municipal Corporation is presented
by the " ancient seaport " of Wisbech, in the Isle of Ely, with
its Town Bailiff, ten Capital Burgesses, and Commonalty of forty-
shilling freeholders a quasi-municipal government which may
with some warrant claim to have furnished between 1689
and 1835 the most pure, energetic, and enlightened urban
administration in the Kingdom. 1
We do not need in this work to trace the origin of the
Wisbech town government in the religious Gild of the Holy
Trinity, the richest of all the Wisbech Gilds, that dominated
the town from at least 1379 down to 1549. 3 Here it suffices
to relate that on the dissolution of this fraternity by the
reforming zeal of Edward VI. the townsfolk succeeded in
obtaining, or rather in purchasing, through the good offices of
their Lord, the Bishop of Ely, not only the property of the
Gild, but also a Eoyal Charter which incorporated them for
the purpose of managing this landed estate, maintaining the
Grammar School, providing for the poor, and looking after
" banks, shores, and streams," with an implied authority to
uphold and enforce the customs of the little community.
Perhaps because it primarily concerned the management of
a common property, and did not expressly convey any powers
unreformed in 1835, and was dissolved only after the Municipal Corporations Act
of 1883. This town of nearly 3000 inhabitants, having been twice refused a
Charter of incorporation, is now (1907) governed only by a parish council (First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2215;
ditto, 1880, part i. p. 37, partii. p. 294 ; History of Dunmow, by J. W. Savill,
1865).
1 For Wisbech we have had the advantage of examining the well-kept records
from 1616 to 1835 ; see also Report of House of Commons Committee on
Corporations, 1833 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835
Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2551 ; Report of Historical Manuscripts Commission
1883 ; Reasons . . . against embanking the Salt Marsh belonging to Sutton
1720 ; Introduction to the Charter of Wisbech, by Mann Hutchesson, 1791
Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827
History of Wisbech, with an Historical Sketch of the Fens (Anon.), 1833 ; History
of Wisbech and the Fens, by Neil Walker and T. Cradock, 1849 ; History of
Wisbech, 1848-1898, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898. The population, said to have
been 1705 in 1676, was 4710 in 1801, and 8777 in 1831.
2 The existing records of the Gild begin in 1379 ; see Report of Public
Record Commissioners, 1837 ; Report of Historical Manuscripts Commission,
vol. ix. p. 293 ; Introduction to the Charter of Wisbech, by Mann Hutchesson,
1791 ; History of Wisbech and the Fens, by N". Walker and T. Cradock, chap.
Hi. pp. 280-301.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 139
of government, this Charter was, for a Tudor instrument,
unusually democratic in form. Ten of the " better, more
honest, and more discreet inhabitants " l called at first " the
Company of the Ten," and afterwards " Capital Burgesses "
were to be freely elected at an annual assembly, or Common
Hall, of all the inhabitant householders. During the next
century and a half this simple constitution was rendered
somewhat more definite, the choice of Capital Burgesses being
first confined by agreement of the householders to forty-
shilling freeholders, and then the constituency, by Charter of
161 1, 2 being at the instance of the Corporation itself, alarmed
at the disorder of the public assemblies, similarly limited.
This franchise, whilst it excluded the mere hired man, cottager,
and temporary sojourner, still admitted, as we believe, most of
the independent householders of the little fishing and trading
port, which had, by 1689, a population under two thousand.
In contravention of the common legal theory, no provision
was made in the Charters for any head of the Corporation, but
local custom, transmitted from the Gild, had established a Town
Bailiff, an officer who represented the township to the County
and executed the decisions of the Capital Burgesses and
assemblies of freeholders. 3 Between 1689 and 1835 we
find the office filled by the Capital Burgesses in annual
rotation, though in some cases a successful and public-spirited
administrator remained for several years in succession. 4 We
find no trace of the Lord of the Manor the Bishop of Ely
holding any Court in Wisbech after the dissolution of the
Gild. 5 The townsfolk themselves levied tolls and dues, took
the waste on long lease, and in 1786 acquired the lease of
the market rights. The parish officers, whether Churchwardens,
Overseers, or Surveyors, appear, throughout the eighteenth
century, as humble subordinates of the Bailiff and Burgesses ;
and it is only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that
1 The terms used at first were "gratia eminentiae " and "de melioribus "
(Introduction to the Charter of Wisbech, by Mann Hutchesson, 1791, pp. 8, 15).
2 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 319-321.
3 A Town Clerk was first appointed in 1679.
4 In a few instances one in 1565 the Town Bailiff seems not himself to
have been a Capital Burgess (History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock,
1849, p. 306).
6 The "Company of the Ten" themselves heard civil cases during the six-
teenth century as a sort of voluntary arbitration tribunal (ibid. pp. 308-310).
HO THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
the Open Vestry of inhabitants rises to any position of
importance. Above all these authorities we are conscious of
the Justices of the Peace of the Isle of Ely, meeting in Quarter
Sessions at Ely and holding Petty Sessions at Wisbech, but
only intervening in the affairs of the town when requested to
do so by the Town Bailiff and Capital Burgesses. The records
from 1689 to 1835 make it clear that the freeholders obeyed
the directions of their first Charter in electing and re-elect-
ing at the Annual Meetings that were always held in the
Gothic hall of the ancient Grammar School the ten " of the
better, more honest, and more discreet inhabitants," the Vicar
figuring nearly always in the list, the others comprising several
" Esquires," " Gentlemen," and " Captains," whilst a few only,
designated "Mr.," served to represent the shopkeepers or
farmers of the township.
It would be an interesting subject for special inquiry why
it was that this simple constitution produced, for the whole
century and a half that we are considering, a government of
remarkable excellence. About the fact the student of all the
available evidence can, we think, have no doubt. The elabor-
ately kept records, coupled with current traditions and the
actual state of the town, demonstrate the existence of an
administration which possibly first taking on a distinctively
Municipal and governmental character in the emergency of the
plague in 1586 * combined, from decade to decade, the three
great qualities of popular assent, purity of administration, and
continuity of enlightened policy. The note of what the
historians of the town term the "direct control of the
people" ' is particularly strong. Even in 1669, at an
epoch when Municipal Corporations were being stripped of
all popular features, the freeholders of Wisbech managed, by
prompt and vigorous action at Court, to prevent the trans-
formation of their ten Capital Burgesses into a Close Body, 3
and, whilst retaining their privilege of popular election, even
secured the definite recognition, in the new Charter, of the
obligation of the Capital Burgesses, not only to allow in-
1 Historical Account of . . . Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827, p. 207.
2 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 347.
3 Historical Account of . . . Wisbech, by W.. Watson, 1827, p. 219;
History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 329-331 ; First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2551.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 141
spection of all their accounts, but also to submit them to the
" Common Hall " for its approval. 1 It was perhaps a per-
sistence of this pugnacious watchfulness that induced suc-
cessive Capital Burgesses to consider themselves the ministers,
and not the masters, of the town. 2 Though the Charter made
necessary only one meeting of the freeholders annually, we
find a frequent consultation by the Capital Burgesses of their
fellow-freeholders or the inhabitants at large. Thus even
when they have to appoint a schoolmaster in 1690, this is
done "at a meeting in the Town Hall . . . the Capital
Burgesses being seven in number, by and with the consent
of eleven others of the Burgesses." 3 When in 1699 the
Capital Burgesses think it necessary to prohibit the squatting
of cottagers upon the Lord's Waste, and to arrange for the
erection of a wall at the Town Bridewell, they lay these
matters before Assemblies of Burgesses, and obtain their
express consent, and even their active co-operation in the
work. 4 So intimate and informal was the relationship between
the Capital Burgesses and the Burgesses at large, that it is
often impossible to distinguish from the records which of the
meetings were confined to the smaller and which were open to
the larger body of governors ; our own impression being that
whenever any important new departure was contemplated, the
Capital Burgesses made a point of calling their constituents
into council to approve the proposal. Nor did the Capital
Burgesses always confine their consultations to the freeholders.
When in 1775 a local drainage Bill before Parliament seemed
likely injuriously to affect the interests of the town, the
Capital Burgesses summoned all the merchants and tradesmen
to a Public Meeting, for which a special report was prepared,
and from which authority was obtained to oppose the Bill at
1 Charter of. 21 Car. II. 1669 ; see First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2552. From 1818 the accounts were
printed and published.
a Thus it was formally resolved in 1826 that no alterations should be made
in the Free Grammar School ' ' without the direction of the Burgesses at large
being taken thereon at a public meeting " ; that a similar meeting should be held
before any Bill was promoted altering the existing Local Act, or effecting any
improvement in the town, or in the navigation (MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corpora-
tion, 2nd November 1826).
3 Ibid. 6th June 1690 ; so again, 31st January 1707.
Ibid. 1699 ; 22nd February 1700 ; 6th November 1720.
142 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
an estimated cost of 200 from the Corporate funds. 1 It was
after friendly consultation with " the clergy and some of the
principal inhabitants of the town " that the Capital Burgesses
submitted to the assembly of freeholders resolutions "for
considering the best means of extending education among
children of the poor/' and started a " Lancastrian " School. 2
From 1809 onwards we find coming in the inhabitants in
Vestry assembled, the Capital Burgesses habitually deferring
to any express resolution of this public meeting. It was in
consistency with this constant reliance on popular assent that
we find the Bailiff and Burgesses of Wisbech in 1833 warm
in their welcome of the Municipal Corporation Commissioners,
and uncompromisingly outspoken in their advocacy of a
popularly elected Town Council as the leading feature of
the Municipal Corporations Reform Bill, against which the
governing bodies of nearly all the Municipalities in the land
were protesting. 8
This dominant fact of popular control does not seem at
any time to have impaired the executive efficiency of the
Capital Burgesses. Though the " Company of the Ten " was
annually elected by the public meeting of freeholders, which
seems to have been an occasion of some public interest, even
the scene of sharp electoral contests lasting till midnight, at
which between one and two hundred freeholders voted, 4 it
appears to have been fairly stable in its membership. At no
time was it the close preserve of party exclusiveness 5 or the
plaything of political struggles ; the substantial inhabitants,
indeed, took their share of service as a public obligation and
not as a private advantage. And their duties were far from
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 21st December 1775 ; 8th January
1776.
2 Ibid. 27th March and 19th April 1811.
3 Ibid. 16th and 28th March 1833 ; 6th January 1834 ; Report of House
of Commons Committee on Corporations, 1833 ; First Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2551 ; History of Wisbech, by N.
Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 337 ; History of Wisbech (anon.), 1833, p. 150.
4 The quaint customs of the election are described in the Historical Account
of . . . Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827, pp. 230-233 ; History of Wisbech
(anon.), 1833, pp. 145-146.
5 As the Test Act applied to the Wisbech Corporation, the Capital Burgesses
had to be at least "occasional conformists"; and when in 1819, 1821, and
1822 an avowed Nonconformist was elected, he was .passed over (ibid, (anon.)
1833, p. 150 ; ibid, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 335 ; ibid, by
F. G. Gardiner, 1898, p. 93).
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 143
light. They met frequently sometimes twenty times in a
year and attended regularly, deciding such issues as arose, or
formulating them for submission to the popular assembly.
But it was on the one among them who served as Town Bailiff
that they relied for the daily task of town administration. It
was the Town Bailiff whom they ordered to set the poor to
work, pave the streets, scour the ditches, cleanse the market-
place, collect the rents, and promote or oppose Bills in
Parliament, exactly as if he had been their salaried servant,
though such phrases as " at his convenience," " as he shall
judge necessary," " at his discretion," or " as occasion offers "
soften the peremptory tone of their multitudinous orders.
Over the financial transactions of the Town Bailiff the Capital
Burgesses throughout maintained the strictest censorship.
" Ordered that no Town Bailiff shall expend upon any one
work above forty shillings without a particular order from
the Hall, and also that no workman's bill that exceeds the
sum of forty shillings shall be paid by the Town Bailiff
without being first perused and having the consent of the
Hall thereto." l He was not even allowed to let the smallest
tenement without the consent of his colleagues. 2 On the two
occasions in 150 years on which a Town Bailiff neglected to
deliver up, on quitting his office, a precise account of his
stewardship, he was prosecuted with relentless rigour. 8 In
1774 we note the beginning of a system of executive com-
mittees, always consisting of the Town Bailiff* and two other
Capital Burgesses. From this date committees to light the
town, to settle the rates of tolls and dues, to audit the
accounts, and to let the lands become practically continuous.
These committees seem to have been little more than devices
for strengthening the authority of the Town Bailiff, for, as
decade follows decade, we find the activity and importance of
this dignitary constantly increasing. We gather, indeed, that
towards the end of our period his official work became so
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 8th November 1694, 9th November
1725, 26th October 1730.
2 "Ordered that no Town Bailiff do put any person into any town house
without the consent of the Hall " (ibid. 8th November 1765).
3 Ibid. 1752-1756, 26th October 1778 ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker
and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 332. Subsequent Bailiffs were required to give
security for 500 (MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 26th October 1778).
144 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
continuous that it was not easy to keep up the succession of
citizens with sufficient leisure, ability, and public spirit to
undertake this onerous unpaid office a difficulty which, in
1829, nearly brought the government of the little town to a
standstill, 1 and may have accounted for the enthusiasm with
which the Capital Burgesses accepted the reforms of 1835.
When we survey the administrative results obtained by
Wisbech in the course of a century and a half, we are able to
appreciate the pride and satisfaction of the whole body of
inhabitants in their local government. At no time and for no
purpose did the Corporation levy a rate. From first to last
the Capital Burgesses, in a spirit of what their historians call
" a healthy poverty," 2 made shift with the rents of the Gild
property, together with the ancient tolls and dues yielded by
the trade of the port. Already in 1689 we find them
managing their landed estate on the most approved modern
principles. At a time when other Corporations were dealing
with their property in secret conclave, conceding to their
members beneficial leases, granting long terms for trifling
fines, and improvidently alienating their freeholds, the Capital
Burgesses of Wisbech were habitually letting their farms and
town tenements by public auction for a term of twenty years,
with carefully drafted covenants, which seem to have been
strictly enforced. In 1751 they were quick to take advantage
of the lowering in the current rate of interest, successfully
negotiating a reduction of the rate on their loans to 4 per cent ;
and in 1774, alarmed at the slow rate at which this bonded
debt was being reduced, they arranged for its conversion into
life annuities. 3 Unlike the practice of so many other towns, in
restricting contracts to members of the Municipal Corporation,
the Capital Burgesses forbade any of their own number to be
pecuniarily interested in the Corporation work or directly or
indirectly to undertake the work of a paid office. 4 At no time
did the Burgesses put forward any claim to exclude non-
freemen from trading. 5 Such Corporate feasting as the habits
of the time demanded were enjoyed by all the Burgesses in
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 14th November 1829.
2 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 347.
3 Ibid. pp. 333-334.
4 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 14th December 1795.
6 History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 338.
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 145
common ; the maximum sum to be spent was carefully limited, 1
and the whole of them were finally discontinued in 1767
owing to a growing sense of decorum. After that date, at any
rate, the Capital Burgesses paid even for the annual dinner
that they allowed themselves. 2 To the same growth of decorum
we may perhaps attribute their success in suppressing, in 1786,
the annual custom of " bull running," which had prevailed at
Wisbech, as at Stamford and elsewhere, "time out of mind,"
and had degenerated into a carnival of brutal disorder. 3
This strict and economical administration of the Corporate
revenues was combined with an active policy according to the
best light of the time. When the relief of the poor was the
main function of the Capital Burgesses, we see them, instead of
giving doles and pensions, providing hemp on which to set the
poor to work; building a workhouse in 1720 out of bricks
made on their own land; establishing in 1691, and again in
1764, regular schools of spinning; and supplying the children
with both religious and industrial instruction. 4 When most
other towns were still relying for their Municipal services on
the performance by each individual householder of his ancient
personal service, Wisbech was already being paved, sewered,
cleansed, lighted, watched no doubt very imperfectly, but at
least on some general plan by paid officers or public contracts,
at the expense of the Corporate funds. 5 But the householder
was not allowed to escape. From the middle of the eighteenth
century onward, we find the Town Bailiff issuing printed
notices to the inhabitants, insisting on the cessation of this or
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 26tli October 1692 ; 5th November
1767 ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 324-325.
2 Historical Account of Wisbech, by W. Watson, 1827, p. 230.
3 History of Wisbech, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p. 25.
4 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 20th February 1622, 7th July 1691,
14th November 1720, 1764, etc. ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and
T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 327, 424 ; ibid, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p. 312.
They even anticipated by seventeen years the statute requiring the outdoor
paupers to wear a badge, resolving in 1680, "to pay for the stamp and 180
badges provided for the poor " (ibid. p. 327).
5 Items for paving the streets, repairing the causeways, and maintaining
bridges occur in the minutes in 1689, 1690, 1692, 1694, 1697, 1699, 1700,
1703, 1705, 1709, etc. ; for sewers to carry away waste water in 1693 and 1715 ;
for the maintenance of the five town pumps in- 1696, 1708, 1714, etc. ; for
sinking a new well and erecting a new pump in 1714 ; for cleansing the streets
and scavenging in 1621, 1705, 1721, 1723, 1725, etc.; for repairing the town's
fire engines in 1707 ; for increasing the number of fire buckets in 1716 ; for
watching the town in 1618, 1708, 1733. 1735 ; for lighting the town in 1715 ;
VOL. II. PT. I L
146 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
that street nuisance or encroachment, and following up these
notices by prosecutions before the Justices of those who disobey
such injunctions. 1 In 1810, when the population and trade
were rapidly increasing, the Capital Burgesses strengthened
the police powers thus exercised by the Town Bailiff by
obtaining a Local Act, in which, among other things, the
definition of public nuisance was enlarged and a more speedy
summary remedy provided. A paid Town Inspector was then
appointed to enforce the law. 2 Meanwhile the navigation of
the tidal river, on which the prosperity of the town depended,
was, from 1710 onwards, constantly being improved at the
public expense. The buoys and beacons were the object of
continual attention ; a special officer, the " Beaconer," was
appointed to look after them ; the channels, always liable to be
silted up, were dredged and deepened ; pilots were licensed and
a harbour-master was appointed ; a public crane was erected
as early as 1719, a public warehouse built in 1788, and a
special timber wharf constructed in 1 7 9 5 ; 8 a more com-
modious "custom house" was provided in 1801, whilst
throughout the whole period we see the Capital Burgesses
carefully watching the numerous drainage schemes or canal
Bills promoted by the neighbouring Fenland authorities, lest
any new project should interfere with the depth of the river
channel. 4 The " ancient seaport," as we find it described in
1720, remained for a century more one of the most important
of English havens for the coasting trade, with several scores of
ships belonging to it, exporting to London, it was said, more
oats and vegetable oil than any other port, and sometimes as
much as 8000 firkins of butter in a year. 5 In 1786 the
Capital Burgesses succeeded in buying up the lease of the
and so on. It was about this time that Defoe found Wisbech "a well-built
market town . . . esteemed the best trading town iu the Isle (of Ely), as
having the convenience of good water-carriage to London, whither they send
great quantities of oil and butter (A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great
Britain, by D. Defoe, vol. i. p. 84 of 1748 edition).
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 10th November 1785 (as to deposit
of dirt) ; 28th June 1785 (as to hogs wandering in the streets).
2 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 16th July 1810 ; 50 George III.
c. 206 ; History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, pp. 339-340.
3 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 5th June 1795.
4 Ibid. 13th July 1719, 12th February 1744, 26th December 1749;
Reasons . . . against embanking the Salt Marsh belonging to Sutton, 1720,
6 Ibid.; History of Wisbech (anon.), 1833, p. 249,
THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP 147
market rights, which had been granted by the Bishop of Ely to
a private lessee, when they at once provided standard Weights
and Measures and set to work to enforce market regulations.
At first they let the tolls by public auction. In 1810, how-
ever, their Local Act l gave them increased market powers, and
during the next few years, when agricultural prices and rents
were alike high, the Capital Burgesses used these powers to
erect a public exchange and commodious market buildings for
corn and fat cattle respectively ; they freed the shambles ; 2
they established a fish market; they provided a spacious
public warehouse for the storage of wool; they contrived an
elaborate system of allotting the stalls in the corn market by
ballot, so as to avoid favouritism ; 3 they appointed their own
collectors of market tolls and a Market Beadle; and in 1829
they were far-sighted enough to decide " with a view to
increase the beneficial purposes of the several markets, and to
induce the public to resort to the town in greater numbers,"
on a policy of drastic reduction in the amount of the market
tolls. 4 Space does not permit us even to mention all the
manifold public enterprises successfully administered by these
Wisbech Burgesses their constant struggle to reclaim the
" drowned lands " of their estate ; their replacing of the old
wooden bridge in 1756-1758 by a handsome stone one ; 5 their
erection of public stairs at a precipitous descent ; 6 their pro-
vision of flat pavements for their footways in 1811; their
active and generous co-operation in the provision of facilities
for religious worship; and their liberal subscriptions to such
enlightened enterprises as the provision in 1826 for public use
of hot and cold salt-water baths, the maintenance of an iceboat
to prevent any stoppage of the drainage current by frost, 7 and
the provision of a savings bank. But it was perhaps in their
zeal for public education that the Capital Burgesses of Wisbech
were most in advance of the rulers of other towns. The
Grammar School, for the maintenance of which they had been
originally incorporated, was always the subject of their liveliest
interest and constant attention. The master whom they
1 50 George III. c. 206. f
2 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 16th July 1816.
3 Ibid. 13th September 1811. 4 Ibid. 2nd November 1829.
6 Ibid. October 1756, 21st October 1757.
6 Ibid. 21st March 1690. 7 Ibid. 6th January 1802.
I 4 8 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
appointed, though always in holy orders, was expressly for-
bidden to accept a living, or even to officiate as a clergyman.
He was not allowed to become a Magistrate or even a Capital
Burgess. He was, relatively to the standard of the times, paid
a liberal salary and provided with skilled assistance. 1 In
addition to this ancient Grammar School, the Capital Burgesses
started a Sunday school in 1786, and, in co-operation with some
of the principal inhabitants, in 1811-1813, also a " Lancas-
trian school " for the children of the poor. 2 They were even
so exceptionally enlightened, at the very early date of 1714,
as to rearrange and open to the public a library of books,
apparently provided by a voluntary book club in the seven-
teenth century, which was subsequently expressly designated a
" public library " ; 3 providing new shelving, getting the books
catalogued, and appointing a paid librarian, whose catalogue
was " to be lodged in the Town Hall for the public use."
(c) Tlie, Lordless Court
We pass now to the bulk of Manorial Boroughs, a hetero-
geneous crowd of authorities exhibiting in 1689 every variety
of constitutional structure, but all alike falling short of
autonomous Corporate Magistracy, and all connected in some
way with the Manorial jurisdiction, from which they may prob-
ably have sprung. We group these into the three sub-classes,
not very clearly distinguishable, that we term respectively the
Lordless Court (where there was practically no Municipal
structure), the Lord's Borough (where Municipal structure had
been developed, but this had remained connected with the
Lord's Court), and, derivative from one or other of these, the
Enfranchised Manorial Borough.
An interesting example of the Lordless Court is furnished
by the little "Borough" of Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in
Northumberland, which held its markets and fairs by Royal
grants of 1309 and 1319 and had in 1382 even sent
members to Parliament. This little port, in 1689 a mere
fishing village, had shaken itself loose from any control or
1 MS. Minutes, Wisbech Corporation, 1st November 1 6 8 9 , 6 th November 1704.
2 Ibid. 27th March and 19th April 1811.
3 Ibid. 6th August 1714 ; History of Wisbech (anon.), 1833, p. 164 ;
ibid, by F. J. Gardiner, 1898, p. 214.
THE LORDLESS COURT 149
interference by the Lord of the Manor. It had been incorpor-
ated by no Charter, either from the King or from its Lord.
But the Lord of the Manor, Lord Widdrington, had apparently
let slip his rights; and after his attainder in 1715, no Courts
were held on behalf of any Lord until 1741. This long
abandonment of the village to an unchecked autonomy, and
the confusion and uncertainty into which the seignorial rights
had fallen, seem to have led to the assumption by the Free-
holders that they had no superior but the King. Accordingly
these proprietors of the ancient " freeledges " or farms, into
which the township had been divided from time immemorial,
themselves held an annual " Court," which we can trace,
from about 1730, continuously for at least a hundred years.
During the eighteenth century, at any rate, they held the
markets and fairs for their own profit, and even levied
" quayage " dues on all ships entering their little harbour,
according to Eoyal Letters Patent of 1316. To the Crown
they paid an ancient fee-farm rent of a little more than 10
a year. " Whereas," they declared, " the Freeholders of the
Town of Newbiggin . . . have time out of mind made
orders among themselves for the stinting and eating of the
Common Town Green and Loaning belonging to Newbiggin
aforesaid, we whose hands are hereunto subscribed and put,
being the present Freeholders of the said Town ... in pursu-
ance of the said custom, do unanimously consent and agree"
to various orders and regulations. In 1720 Lord Widdrington's
estates and Manors were bought by the York Buildings
Water Company of London, apparently as a speculative
investment ; and in due course the Company took steps to
reduce the Freeholders of Newbiggin to due Manorial subjection.
In 1731 we see the Freeholders contributing "a shilling a
freehold " to defend their rights and privileges. But more
expensive proceedings were at hand. In 1733 a long
Chancery suit was begun against them, which lasted ten
years, but ended in some inconclusive way, leaving their
privileges unimpaired.
" The proceedings of this suit," writes Dr. Creighton,
"show us a community completely self-governed, with no
interference from a Lord, and little from the Crown. ... In
1730, back to which date the Freeholders' books survived, we
ISO THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
find the arable laud already divided, but the pasture land still
held in common. The Freeholders meet and make By-laws
for the pasturage. They appoint Constables, Ale-tasters, and
Bread-weighers. They levy tolls on boats and ships, and
receive payments for carts loading seaweed from the shore, for
lobster- tanks in the rocks, for stones quarried on the fore-
shore. The money they receive from these rents is divided
among the Freeholders in proportion to the ancient freeledges
or farms." 1 They even took to themselves all wrecks thrown
upon their rocky coast, and sold the privilege of gathering
seaweed. For nearly a century after the Chancery suit we
find them governing the little town; declaring, in 1730, that
the Ale- tasters whom they appointed " are to have at every
alehouse in the town one quart"; in 1753 ordaining "no
ducks to be kept in town"; in 1762 "that the Constable
weigh all butter and bread that shall be offered for sale iii
the said township." Similar entries occur down to 1829.
This humble government remained undiscovered by the
Municipal Corporation Commissioners of 1835, and even by
those of 1876-1880. The little group of Freeholders seems
gradually to have let drop its public functions, whilst retaining,
and even enlarging, its proprietary rights. It has enclosed
parcels of land, let them on lease, and allowed quarries to be
opened. The shares have (1907) gradually become con-
centrated, it is said, in the hands of a couple of owners, who
have bought up many of the " stints " of their colleagues,
separately from their freeholds, taking conveyances of these
separated " stints " as transferring all rights in the collective
ownership. Meanwhile the little town, growing again into a
port with some little trade and a population of a couple of
thousands, has equipped itself with the commonplace machin-
ery of an Urban District Council under the Public Health
Acts, apparently leaving all its quondam public possessions
to become exclusively the private property of these two
proprietors. 2
1 "The Northumbrian Border," by Mandell Creighton, in Archaeological
Journal, vol. xlii., 1885, p. 62.
2 The two Freeholders who are reputed to have got control of all the shares
find, it is said, some difficulty in disposing of the property, owing to the ambiguity
of their title, and we believe that litigation is pending (1907). To a similar
difficulty experienced by their predecessors we owe much of our information.
THE LORD LESS COURT 151
The origin of some of the governments that we have called
Lordless Courts may be suggested by the history of the so-
called Borough of Tetbury in Gloucestershire. 1 Here we find
a large Manor owned by the Berkeleys, extending five miles by
three, and divided into two parts, " the Borough " and " the
Foreign." Early in the seventeenth century "the Borough"
had already, under successive seignorial Charters, acquired a
certain degree of independence. At the Court held by the
Lord's Steward every October, the Jury presented the names
of three persons, out of which the Steward had to choose one
as "King's Bailiff," whilst the other officers Constables,
" Wardsmen " (who were " Assistants to the Constables "),
Carnals, Ale-tasters or " Assizemen," and a Searcher and Sealer
of Leather were freely elected by the Jury. The market tolls
were strictly limited by ancient custom; the Lord had granted
" common of pasture " over Tetbury Warren between certain
Copy of the case submitted to counsel two generations ago passed into the hands
of the late Mr. Woodman, and furnished Dr. Creighton with his facts. That
copy has disappeared from among the Woodman MSS. ; but Mr. J. Crawford
Hodgson has another copy of it, which he kindly allowed us to see. The
Chancery suit was Gregory ;;. Pattinson, 1733 to 18th June 1743. See also The.
History of Northumberland, by Kev. J. Hodgson, vol. ii. part ii., 1832, pp. 213-
220; paper on "The Northumbrian Border," by Rev. M. Creighton, in
Archaeological Journal, vol. xlii., 1885, p. 62.
1 For the history of Tetbury we have had the advantage of consulting the MS.
records of the Feoft'ees, including minutes, accounts, and records of the Manorial
Courts, etc. ; a unique copy of the presentments of the Court in 1623, setting
forth the then constitution of the Borough ; Articles of Agreement anno VII.
Car. I. for tJie purchase of the Manor, Tolls . . . with Judge Coxes opinion on,
some cases concerning the same, 1782 ; By-laws made for the Borough, London
Gazette, 12th September 1687 ; a "Case on the Tolls of the Fairs and Markets,"
1790 ; 54 George III. cap. cxliv. (Tetbury Inclosure Act, 1814); 57 George III.
cap. ii. (Tetbury Paving Act, 1817) ; 2 and 3 Vic. c. 7 (Sale of Advowson
Act, 1839); Further Report of Commissioners to inquire into Charities, 1828,
p. 351 ; History of the Town and Parish of Tetbury, by Rev. Alfred T. Lee,
1857 ; also New History of Gloucestershire, by Samuel Rudder, 1779, pp. 727-
733.
Gloucestershire had other reputed Boroughs, such as Chipping Sodbury,
which had between 1681 and 1688 Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses, and
afterwards a Bailiff nominated by the Homage Jury at the Lord's Court ; Dursley,
with much the same organisation ; Newnham, electing annually a Mayor and six
Aldermen, but actually governed by two "Beams" or Constables (First Report
of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. i. pp. 37, 49 ; ditto,
1880, part i. p. 33, part ii. p. 406 ; Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire,
by R. Atkyns, 1768, pp. 347-354 ; New History of Gloucestershire, by S. Rudder,
1779 (for Chipping Sodbury, pp. 671-676) ; Chapters of Parochial History
(Dursley), by J. H. Blunt, 187 7 ; "Notes on the Borough and Manor of Newnham,"
by R. J. Kerr, in Transactions of Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological
Society, vol. xviii., 1893). We refer separately to Chipping Campden (p. 180),
152 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
dates, and there was also pasturage all the year round on
certain other wastes of the Manor. 1
This Manorial constitution was destined during the seven-
teenth century to be developed, by the gradual transfer of the
Lord's rights, into an almost complete autonomy. A wealthy
Alderman of the City of London, Sir William Romney, first
took the market on lease from the Lord, at a substantial rent,
together with the ancient " Tolzey " ; and then in 1610
bequeathed the remainder of his lease, partly for charitable
purposes and partly for the common good, to a body of trustees
for the town, of whom he named the first thirteen, empowering
them to co-opt their successors. Some years later we find
this charitable trust made the subject of inquiry by commis-
sioners for the Court of Chancery, who were, in fact, some of
the neighbouring magnates, with a view to placing it on a
more permanent basis. In consultation with the " King's
Bailiff" for the time being (who was elected, it will be
remembered, at the annual Court of the Manor), and the
principal inhabitants, the Commissioners recommended the
consolidation of the authorities of the town into a recognised
governing body, 2 consisting of the Bailiff, and twelve " Brethren
and Assistants," known as the " Thirteen," representing, we
may assume, the original trustees, and a " company or society
called the Four-and-Twenty " ; the Thirteen to fill vacancies
by co-option from out of the Four-and-Twenty ; and recruits
for the Four-and-Twenty to be chosen by the two bodies
jointly. The Thirteen were, by a provision as to which the
legal authority might be questioned, to have the power to levy
a rate upon the inhabitants, in supplement of their trust funds,
and to appoint the Schoolmaster, the Lecturer, and the inmates
of the almshouses. This constitution was sanctioned by the
Court of Chancery, and embodied in an instrument under the
Great Seal. 8
But a further stage was yet to come. In 1632 the Lady
Berkeley and her son, Lord Berkeley, being concerned to
promote the welfare of their principal Borough of Berkeley,
1 This constitution is described in the presentments of the Court held in
October 1623, of which a unique MS. copy has been placed at our disposal.
2 The resemblance of this constitution to that of.Beccles should be noted.
3 Further Report of Royal Commission to inquire into Charities, 1828,
p. 351.
THE LORDLESS COURT 153
and needing ready money, offered to sell the Manor of
Tetbury, both " the Borough " and " the Foreign." It seems
that, possibly because there was no large estate within the
Manor, but four or five score small occupying freeholders, the
noble owners intimated their willingness " not only that every
particular tenant . . . might for their own particular and
private uses buy the inheritance of their several tenements
. . . but also that such parts thereof as might be convenient
and necessary might be bought and purchased for the public
and general good of the said Borough to have continuance
for ever for their public good and benefit." " Therefore," we
are told, "the Bailiff and the rest of the Thirteen and other
of the inhabitants of the said Borough . . . did consider and
treat among themselves what might be fit for them to do ...
and upon mature and deliberate consideration had at several
meetings in public, they did think it fit for the general good
of the said Borough " to subscribe among themselves the sum
of 840, with which to buy not only the whole Manor with
its Courts, warren, waste lands, rents, royalties, liberties, and
franchises, but also an existing lease of the warren, and even
the advowson of the living, so that the Borough might appoint
its own clergyman. The "Articles of Agreement" then
concluded between the Lord and Lady Berkeley on the one
hand and the principal inhabitants of Tetbury on the other, 1
afford a charming vision of a great deal of public-spirited
activity in the town. Unlike most Charters and other
instruments of this period, this agreement aimed at placing
the property in trust, not for the members of the governing
body, or of any Corporation, or even for a class of Burgesses,
Freeholders, or Freemen, but for all the inhabitant house-
holders for the time being. Thus all the residents were free
to trade, to use the market, and to worship in the church.
The existing Commoners agreed to forgo their rights of
pasture over certain lands, in order to permit these to be
ploughed and sown with corn until the proceeds had sufficed
to complete the reimbursement to the trustees of any sums
1 The MS. copy of the Articles of Agreement in our possession shows that
the formal agreement was made with (a) four trustees, (b) the Bailiff and the
rest of the Thirteen, (c) " the company or society called the Four-and -Twenty,"
and (d) 44 persons "all of the number called the Commonalty " (who were possibly
the freeholders).
154 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
that they had expended. The pasturage was subsequently
to be enjoyed, not only by the owners of " the ancient
messuages," but also by those of " newly erected messuages
or cottages," and even by immigrants into the Borough after
they had lived there seven years, or on payment of the sum
of 5, immediately they took up residence. 1 This remark-
able co-operative purchase of the Manor, under carefully
drawn Articles of Agreement, incidentally, and possibly un-
intentionally, led to a change in the constitution. The legal
ownership was vested in seven Feoffees, filling vacancies among
themselves by co-option, who were jointly Lords of the
Manor, and as such held the Courts. These became, it is
clear, along with the Bailiff, the Executive of the Borough,
acting in more or less consultation with the Thirteen, who
were, we are told, always " the gravest, chiefest, and discreetest
townsmen " ; and who continued to audit the accounts and
give a sort of confirmatory authority to the actions of the
Feoffees and the Bailiff. The Bailiff was " usually the senior
Thirteen who had not yet served that office." The Four-and-
Twenty seems to have had no function beyond that of
furnishing recruits to the Thirteen, and we do not gather
that it continued to meet otherwise than as the Jury which
the Bailiff summoned to the Court of the Feoffees, with which
it is believed to have become identical. 2
Under this Corporate government Tetbury continued to
flourish, growing in population from about 1200 in 1700 to
about 3500 in 17*79, when it ranked as "the third town in
Gloucestershire," 3 buildingfor itself in 165 5 a market hall, setting
up public pumps, and even widening its streets, out of its not
inconsiderable Manorial revenues. The Feoffees' six-monthly
Courts, with the two Juries, one for " the Borough," the other for
" the Foreign," occasionally included among their presentments
orders to the Feoffees not to dispose of any of the " Town's
Stock " without the consent of the inhabitants, complaints as
to the condition of the streets, and formal indictments of
1 In 1640 the last remnant of the Lord's rights was got rid of by the
purchase, for 1400, of the reversion of the Markets and Fairs after the expiry of
the lease. This purchase had been provided for, by anticipation, in the Articles
of 1632, and the trustees had saved up money for it.
2 MS. note recording old tradition.
3 New History of Gloucestershire, by S. Rudder, 1779, pp. 727-733.
155
officers for neglect of duty. This Court was also used by the
Feoffees publicly to let by auction to the highest bidder both
the tolls of the market and the manure of the streets. But
from a case submitted to Counsel in 1790 we gather that
the Feoffees found difficulty at that date in enforcing their
authority, and were doubtful as to the powers that either they
or their " Court Leet and Court Baron " could actually put in
force against nuisance-mongers. How far and how rapidly the
Feoffees, the Jury, and the Bailiff were, in the early decades of
the nineteenth century, superseded by the County Justices,
who had come to hold regular Petty and Special Sessions in
the Borough, or by the inhabitants in Vestry assembled, we
have been unable to ascertain. In 1814 the Feoffees cordially
assisted in obtaining an Inclosure Act, and in 1817 a Paving
and Lighting Act.
Meanwhile the little town of Tetbury was being rapidly
left behind by the changing course of trade and industry.
The market had been, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the most frequented in the district, large quantities of
wool, yarn, and serge, as well as of corn, bacon, cheese, and
cattle, changing hands : so much as 1000 being dealt with on
a single day. Gradually, however, it decayed ; the population
declined to half the total of 1779 ,- the Corporate revenues fell
away to a few pounds annually ; the functions of the Bailiff,
the Feoffees, and the Thirteen silently diminished to next to
nothing, until the so-called " Borough " of Tetbury became
almost indistinguishable in its government from the neighbour-
ing villages. 1
1 It was not discovered by the Municipal Corporation Commissions of 1835
and 1876-1880. It became first a Local Board and then an Urban District
Council, under the Public Health Act (population in 1901, 1989, or little
over half the highest point reached more than a century previously). The
Feotfees now regard themselves exclusively as trustees of a. small charitable
endowment.
Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire, may be cited as an analogous case of a
benefaction to the town becoming the basis of local autonomy (see An Essay on
English Municipal History, by James Thompson, 1867, pp. 146-152 ; the
various papers by Thomas North in the Transactions of the Leicestershire
Architectural and Archaeological Society, vols. iii. and iv., 1874-1875). Here lands
were leased and purchased by the inhabitants in 1549-1565 and vested in
Feoffees, the money being found by a quite extra-legal special levy. At first we
gather that Town Wardens and " Spinny Wardens, " Overseers for Pavements
and Bridgemasters, Constables and Swineherds, a Hay ward and a "Town's
Husband," were all elected annually at a public meeting of the inhabitants.
156 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Here and there we discover examples of Lordless Courts
of less obvious origin than the Borough of Tetbury. In the
wild and mountainous region that separates the verdures of
Windermere from the spreading sands of Morecambe Bay, we
find a "Society and Fellowship of the Four -and -Twenty," a
Close Body meeting at the ancient abbey church of Cartmel,
which we have assumed to be a Parish Vestry analogous to
that of Braintree in Essex, and have already described it as
such. 1 It seems, however, to have itself possessed Manorial
jurisdiction over the seven townships of the parish, and
to have held its own Manorial Courts for the appointment
of officers and the regulation of the life of the inhabitants. 2
How the Four -and -Twenty "Sidesmen" of Cartmel, as
they were eventually termed, came to possess this great
Manor ; how the unincorporated parish could legally hold
it without its being vested in feoffees or trustees ; how
the Sidesmen got the right to receive the fines and
amercements of the Courts held by a Steward on their
But an executive committee was chosen in 1582, and in 1628 we find "ten or
twelve of the principal men of the parish " acting as a Close Body, which seems
to have ruled, with the Trustees and Town Wardens, for over a century. By
1775, however, even this Close Body had fallen into desuetude, and discontent
began to be manifested at the Trustees ruling alone. After some years' struggle
a deed of compromise was signed in 1793, by which the town gave itself a new
constitution, the whole authority resting in the annual public meeting, which
chose all the officers. This, though a troublesome and occasionally turbulent
authority, continued without legal warrant for three quarters of a century, until
the administration passed under the Public Health Acts, first to a Local Board
and then to an Urban District Council (population in 1901, 7454).
As possibly analogous to Tetbury and Melton Mowbray, we may cite the
so-called Borough of Clitheroe, one of the townships of the great parish of
Whalley in Lancashire, and formerly part of the extensive Honour of Clitheroe,
with a population increasing from 1368 in 1801 to 5213 in 1831, which had
received a seignorial Charter in the twelfth century. Here the government was
in the hands of the owners of the ancient burgage hereditaments, who,, having
been duly admitted as Burgesses, elected annually two of themselves as Bailiffs,
and were eligible to be summoned by the Bailiffs on an " Inquiry Jury," which
served as a sort of occasional council. The Bailiffs acted as Lords of the Manor,
holding (with their Recorder) a Borough Court for the trial of personal actions
of any amount, and (by their Town Clerk as Steward) a Court Leet, at which a
series of Manorial officers were appointed (including a paid "Well-cleaner").
See First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol.
iii. p. 1483 ; Ancient Charters and other Muniments of the Borough of Clitheroe,
by J. Harland, 1851 ; History of the original Parish of Whalley, by T. D.
Whitaker, vol. ii., 1876, pp. 68-99 ; and pp. 48, 205 of the present work.
1 The Parish and the County, Book I. Chap. V. Section (a), The Close
Vestry by Immemorial Custom.
2 Annals of Cartmel, by James Stockdale, 1872; Cartmeltoniana, by Rev.
W. ftbliott, 1854 ; Tfie Rural Deanery of Cartmel, edited by R. H. Kirby, 1892.
THE LORDLESS COURT 157
behalf ; * what exactly had been their relation to one particular
township of their great parish, Flookburgh by name, which
possessed ancient Municipal regalia and a sword of office and
was reputed once to have been a Chartered Borough; 2 how
they acquired the power of disposing at their will of the waste
and commons, eventually dividing up the whole area under
Inclosure Acts among some 300 freeholders; 3 how they
managed to take deodands and forfeitures, 4 and even to
appropriate the proceeds of wrecks upon the shore, 5 we must
leave as interesting inquiries to the historian of a preceding
period.
But government by a Lordless Court was not always
confined to small and isolated communities. The best t
example of such a government is furnished, indeed, by the
Manorial Borough of Birmingham. 6 The town of Birmingham,
having in 1689 probably under 12,000 inhabitants, and fifty
years later not more than twice that number, sprang, like
Manchester, in the second half of the eighteenth century, from
a mere manufacturing village, which had forgotten that it was
ever called a Borough, into a densely crowded, great industrial
1 Annals of Cartmel, by James Stockdale, 1872, p. 168.
2 Ibid. pp. 121, 291. 3 Ibid. pp. 326-384.
4 " It is ordered that (three names) shall be appointed to collect these sums
of money hereafter mentioned, being deodands and forfeited goods, viz. of J. F.
53/- ; of R. S. 40/- for horse and wheels ; W. H. for the running gear of Staveley
watermill, 48/4 ; of C. B. for 10 lent by M. K for L. R.'s horse and saddle ;
and that these sums be paid before Christmas next or else the same be put in
suit. Also that the men aforesaid do view a cockboat at N. and do sell the
same" (Minute of 1653, ibid. p. 83).
6 Ibid. pp. 293-295. Cartmel was not inquired into either by the Municipal
Corporation Commissioners of 1833-1835 or by those of 1876-1880.
Throlcmorton's Survey of the Borough and Manor of Birmingham, 1553,
by W. B. Bickley and Joseph Hill, 1891 ; Memorials of Old Birmingham, by
J. Toulmin Smith, 1863 ; The Gild of Holy Cross, Birmingham, by Lucy
Toulmin Smith, 1894; History of Birmingham, by William Button, 1st edition,
1781, 7th edition, 1840 ; Hints for a History of Birmingham, by James Jaffray,
1855 (?) ; History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, vol. i.,
1878 ; Tlie Duty of the Respective Officers appointed by the Court Leet in the
Manor of Birmingham, 1789 ; A Concise History of Birmingham, 1817 (?) ; The
Picture of Birmingham, by James Drake, 1825 ; Historical and Descriptive
Sketch of Birmingham, 1830 ; The State of the Court of Requests and the Public
Office of Birmingham, by Joseph Parkes, 1828. The Court Leet records exist
only from 1799, and are unimportant ; the MS. Minutes of the Street Com-
missioners are available from 1776 ; whilst we have only been able to find MS.
Vestry Minutes for St. Martin's (the principal) parish back to 1795. On the
other hand much may be gleaned from the newspapers (of which a large sample ; '
is to be found in A Century of Birmingham Life (1741-1841), by J. A. Langford,
1868) ; and contemporary references.
158 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
centre, containing by 1835 a population of more than 150,000.
Like Manchester, too, it had no Municipal Corporation, and
was dependent for all magisterial authority on the Justices
of the Peace of the County. But though Birmingham
remained, equally with Manchester, under a Manorial form
of government, the actual working of it was very different.
It was not merely that at Birmingham the more important
Municipal services had, from 1776 onwards, increasingly passed
into the hands of a statutory body of Street Commissioners,
which we shall subsequently describe. 1 What was even more
important, Birmingham had, already at the end of the seven-
teenth century, shaken off nearly all the authority of the Lord
of the Manor, and, by the beginning of the nineteenth century,
had ousted him from the last remnant of power. The govern-
ment, nominally Manorial, took the form of what was practi-
cally a Lordless Court. As at Manchester, the chief officers
of the town were chosen annually at the Court Leet, 2 presided
over by the Lord's Steward. But by long tradition the
selection of the Jury was not in the hands of the Steward,
but was left to the "Low Bailiff" chosen at the previous
Court. 8 The Lord of the Manor had, in fact, let slip all
his authority over the Court Leet, except the formal presiding
of his Steward ; and the Court itself had, in the nineteenth
century, 4 allowed its own powers to lapse. There was a busy
Manorial market, but in 1806 the Street Commissioners
1 Book IV. Chap. IV. The Street Commissioners.
2 The formal procedure of the Court Leet is given in The Duty of the, Respec-
tive Officers appointed by the Court Leet in the Manor of Birmingham, by Thomas
Lee, Steward of the Manor, 1789, partly reprinted in the History of the Corpora-
tion of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878, vol. i. pp. 4, 19, where the Court
Leet is described.
3 " The function of the Low Bailiff is to summon an annual Court Leet, at
which he chooses a Jury, who elect all the officers for the ensuing year. . . .
The choice, therefore, of all these virtually rests with the Low Bailiff, as holding
the absolute choice of the electing Jury " (The Picture of Birmingham, by James
Drake, 1825, p. 18). In 1722, and again in 1792, this custom of leaving the
selection of the Jury to the Low Bailiff was contested. In order to secure the
election of Church and Tory officers, the Steward on each occasion chose the Jury
and elected his nominees. On each occasion the Whig Nonconformists fought
the issue at the assizes, with the result of establishing the customary right of the
Low Bailiff (History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878,
vol. i. pp. 17, 19).
4 Hutton, writing in 1794, observes that the "duties of office are little
known except that of taking a generous dinner, which is punctually observed.
It is too early to begin business till the table is well stored with bottles and too
late afterwards" (History of Birmingham, 3rd edition, 1795, p. 144).
THE LORDLESS COURT 159
farmed the tolls and the management from the Lord, who
thus lost all interest in the appointment of officers, and the
Court Leet itself lost all practical control over market
regulation. It continued to appoint annually a whole
hierarchy of Manorial officers, as it was said, "to govern
the town." "A High Bailiff, who inspects the markets and
sees that justice is observed between buyer and seller,
rectifying the weights and dry measures ; a Low Bailiff,
who summons a Jury who choose all the other officers, viz.
two Constables and one Headborough ; two High Tasters, who
" examine the goodness of the beer and its measure ; and two
Low Tasters, or Meat Conners, who inspect the meat exposed
for sale, and cause that to be destroyed which is unfit for food.
Deritend, being a hamlet of Birmingham, sends its inhabitants
to the Birmingham Court Leet, where a Constable is elected
for them, and at which all the Town Officers are chosen and
sworn in ; the whole in the name of the Lord of the Manor." l
But these officers did not in practice pay any attention to
their nominal duties. After the end of the eighteenth century,
at any rate, 2 they reported no offenders, the Jury made no
presentments, and the Court levied no fines. The annual
holding of the Court was transformed into an elaborate
luncheon given by the retiring Low Bailiff to his friends and
the principal inhabitants, at which the formal appointment of
officers for the ensuing year was made. 3 There was not even
the interest of religious or political rivalry, it having long
been " customary to chose the High Bailiff from the Church-
men and the Low Bailiff from the Dissenters." The only
functions really performed were ceremonial. " To the High
Bailiff," we are told, " is conceded by custom the duty
formerly exercised by the Constables of convening and
conducting the business of all public meetings in the town. . . .
He proclaims the two fairs, one at Whitsuntide, the other at
Michaelmas, going in procession with the other town officers,
1 A Concise History of Birmingham (anon.), 5th edition, 1817, pp. 38-39.
2 The History of the Corporation of Birmingham, by J. T. Bunce, 1878,
vol. i. p. 13, gives a few instances of amercements for market offences between
1779 and 1796.
8 Thus, in 1825, "the Court Leet assembled ... at the Public Office
about 1 2 o'clock and proceeded from thence to the Royal Hotel, where they par-
took of a sumptuous cold collation, after which the following gentlemen were
chosen to fill the offices" (Birmingham Journal, 29th October 1825).
160 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
the Jury of the Court Leet, and a retinue of his personal
friends, attended by a band of music to enliven the scene." l
Yet in the eyes of the Birmingham Radicals of 1830 the
Court Leet and the High Bailiff loomed large as a relic
of feudal tyranny, "a close, self -elected, in-and-in body,
irresponsible to or uncontrolled by public opinion." 2 . . .
" It is true that they have no power in the vulgar accepta-
tion of the word. . . . But the assumed power of conferring
on public meetings a character of Town's Meetings, and
stigmatising other meetings regularly and openly convened
by public requisition as not Town's Meetings ; of defraying
the expenses of some and refusing the costs of others is a
species of bastard power which must and will be soon
extirpated. This rusty machinery may, in fact, be said to have
usurped the right of petition and public meetings. It was
aforetime always necessary to ask the Manager of the Court
Leet whether he would let his man-servant the High Bailiff
call such and such a meeting, and if cold water was thrown
upon the meeting by the power behind the throne no meeting
was called." 3 Yet the annual Courts Leet continued nomin-
ally to be held, and High and Low Bailiffs to be appointed for
Birmingham, after the town had been definitely incorporated
as a Municipal Borough, and, in fact, down to 1854, when the
practice was silently discontinued. 4
(d) The Lord's Borough
From the Lordless Court we pass by slight distinctions to
the Lord's Borough, itself developing with almost imperceptible
gradations into the Enfranchised Manorial Borough. Of the
Lord's Borough the specimens range themselves in a practically
1 An Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Birmingham, 1830, pp. 85-87.
This "proclaiming the fair" is described in the Birmingham Journal, 20th
May 1826, from which it appears that the function ended with a "sumptuous"
dinner, given by the High Bailiff.
2 Birmingham Journal, 16th October 1830.
3 Ibid. 30th October 1830. The High Bailiff " became chairman of all
Town's Meetings and the nominal leader of the town in all public affairs "
(Birmingham Journal, 26th November 1864 ; Modern Birmingham and its
Institutions, by J. A. Langford, vol. ii. p. 266).
4 The Town Clerk informs us that the Birmingham Corporation, though
owning the market rights, has never bought the Manor, which remains, as mere
property, in private hands.
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 161
continuous series, from merely rudimentary examples, through
the so-called Boroughs of Berkeley and Wotton, described in
the last chapter as mere subordinate parts of a Hierarchy of
Courts, up to the Borough of Arundel, where the dependence
on the Court of the Lord was more nominal than real. What
marks this series off from the Lordless Court is the presence,
even in its lowest members, of new constitutional structure,
additional to that of the most highly evolved Lord's Court :
constitutional structure, which, in the highest members of the
series, becomes itself the supreme, if not the only governmental
authority of the town.
We may take as a specimen of the merest rudiment of a
Lord's Borough the tiny community of Holy Island, off the
Northumberland coast. Passing over all its celebrity in
ecclesiastical history, we find Holy Island in 1689 under a
primitive constitution. There are two Bailiffs, twenty -four
Burgesses, and an unlimited number of Stallingers. 1 The
Burgesses, called also " Freemen," are the owners of the ancient
freehold tenements of the Island, which are twenty-four in
number. They claim and are accorded an exceptionally large
" stint " of pasturage on the commons of the Island. They
alone elect one of the Bailiffs, the other being the nominee of
the Lord. The Stallingers have no share in the election of a
Bailiff, and but small stints of pasturage. But they have to
attend the Lord's Court, and there they may possibly serve on
the Jury, which presents nuisances and nominates a Serjeant,
Constables, Aleconners, Bread- weighers, and other petty officers,
though whether they may share in the trial of petty debt
cases is less certain. This constitution went on until 1793,
when an Inclosure Act ignored the distinction between Bur-
gesses and Stallingers, which faded away. 2
If a village community such as Holy Island had " received
a few Chartered privileges from a mediaeval baron," it might,
1 " Stallangiator " is used about 1270 for "a staller, or tenser, a foreigner
who paid for a stand in the market and did not enter the Freedom of the
Borough" (Borough Customs, by Mary Bateson, vol. i., 1904, p. 112). The
student will not fail to notice the close analogy between the twenty-four "Bur-
gesses" of Holy Island and the usual " Four-and-Twenty " of a Northumber-
land parish (see The Parish mid the County, 1906, pp. 179-181).
2 History of North Durham, by T. Raine, 1852, p. 161. Holy Island
(population in 1901, 405) is now governed by a Parish Council of its own.
VOL. II. PT. I M
162 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
as Professor Maitland points out, even be " allowed a precarious
place on the roll of English Boroughs." l But such Chartered
Boroughs, for all their pretensions, might amount, in fact,
constitutionally, to no more than Holy Island. Thus, the
ancient " Borough of Petersfield," in Hampshire, returning
two Members of Parliament, was, in 1689, hardly to be
distinguished from a mere Court of the Manor. But at the
Annual Leet or Lawday the officers appointed comprised (in
addition to the Bailiff, Constables and Tithingmen) a Mayor,
and two Ale-tasters, who were called Aldermen. The Jury
was selected and summoned by the Lord's Steward, so that the
Mayor and Aldermen, like the other officers, might be said to
be indirectly the mere nominees of the Lord. Moreover, the
Lord retained in his own hands all the jurisdiction, the profits
of the Courts, and the administration of the market. Yet the
Mayor and Burgesses of Petersfield claimed to be a Corporation ;
the town called itself a Borough and returned Members to
Parliament as a Borough; it seems once to have had a
Merchant Gild ; and the Mayor and Burgesses had, in the
past, even asserted that their Corporation owned the Borough,
and had been, time out of mind, legally seized of its fairs and
markets. The Burgesses of Petersfield, had received seignorial
grants and Charters of the fifteenth century, purporting to give
them the same rights as were enjoyed by the citizens of
Winchester; and but for the fact that a case was decided
against them in 1613, might eventually have made their
Manorial Borough independent of the Lord of the Manor. 2
1 Township and Borough, by F. W. Maitland, 1898, pp. 16-17.
2 We have not been able to discover any MS. archives of Petersfield, beyond
the Charters. Most information is to be found in the Report of the Case of the
Borough of Petersfield . . . determined by ... the House of Commons in 1820
and 1821, by JR. S. Atcheson, 1831, and the volumes on Parliamentary election
cases by Thomas Carew(1755), Douglas (1775-77), Cockburn and Rowe (1833),
and Perry and Knapp (1833) ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Commis-
sions, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 797 ; Report of ditto, 1880, Part I. p. 90 ;
Evidence, p. 76 ; The Gild Merchant, by C. Gross, vol. ii. p. 387. See also
General History of Hampshire, by B. B. Woodward, T. C. Wilks, and C.
Lockhart, 1861-69, vol. iii. pp. 317-322.
In much the same position as Petersfield were, we imagine, several small
Manorial Boroughs of Devonshire, such as Bovey Tracey, which had a Portreeve
or Mayor, as well as a Bailiff, annually chosen at the Lord's Court, with a
"Mayor's Riding," or " Mayor's Show, " on "Rood mass Day," and a "Portreeve's
Park," or field, of which the Mayor for the year had the profits ; or Harton or
Hartland, where the Portreeve was chosen at the Court Leet ; or Modbury, with
a great nine days' fair, proclaimed by the Portreeve and Borough Jury at the
THE LORDS BOROUGH 163
The men of Alresford, only twelve miles distant from
Petersfield, counted themselves more fortunate. 1 Here the
ecclesiastical potentate of the south of England, the Bishop
of Winchester, had, in 1570 or 1572, granted a written
constitution to " our Borough and Town of New Alresford,"
making the local governing authority independent of the
Manorial Court. "Know ye therefore," runs this verbose
seignorial Charter, "that we, the said Bishop, have granted,
and for us and our successors for ever ordained, that for the
future there shall be for ever within our Town and Borough
of New Alresford aforesaid one Bailiff and eight Burgesses
of the better and more creditable inhabitants." In the
involved legal phraseology of the day, the Bishop proceeds
to name the first holders of these offices, but he provides that
they shall choose from among themselves the Bailiff year by
year, and fill vacancies in their own number by co-option.
The Bishop does more than this. He starts this seignorial
Corporation with two Courts of its own : one termed a Court
Baron or Three Weeks' Court, for the settlement of disputes
and debts among the inhabitants, and the other, a Court of
Pie Powder, for the regulation of the great fair of Alresford
to which the whole country-side then resorted. Moreover,
he expressly relinquishes to his nascent Corporation certain
of the powers usually connected with the holding of the Court
Leet or Lawday, such as "Bloodshed, together with the
amercements and pains thereof " ; the " Assize of Bread, Ale
and Wine " ; the making orders " and constitutions among the
site of the old market cross ; or Newton Abbot and Newton Bushell, two
moieties of one parish, each governed by its own Portreeve, chosen annually at
the Lord's Court (History of Devonshire, by R. N. Worth, 1895, pp. 240,
307, 319; "Early History of the Manor of Hartland," by R. P. Chope,
in Proceedings of Devonshire Association, 1902, vol. xxxiv. pp. 418-454 ;
Modbury, by G. A. Cawse, 1860 ; Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1880, Part I. pp. 17, 37, Part II. pp. 840, 860 (Bovey Tracey and
Harton) ). Such, too, may have been Colyford in Dorsetshire, reputed to have
been a chartered Borough, and having a Mayor who took the profits of the fair
(The Book of the Axe, by G. P. R. Pulman, 4th edition, 1875, pp. 789-790).
1 For Alresford we have seen only MS. copies of the Charters ; the MS.
archives of the Manorial courts, 1657-1720, 1781-1835 ; and sundry unconsecu-
tive archives of 1628-1705, jurors' book, 1825, etc. A minute book of the
Corporation, mentioned in 1880, was not found. See also Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1880, Part I. pp. 8, 141 ; report of local inquiry by
the Charity Commissioners in Hampshire Chronicle, 26th March 1887 ; also
Sketches of Hampshire, by John Duthy, 1839, pp. 107-108.
164 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
artificers and other inhabitants of the Borough " ; the " con-
trolling and correction of weights and measures " ; and the
making of By-laws " for the public good " and their enforcement
by fine and distress. The Corporation was to act as Eeeve,
and thus secure to its own officers the collection of the
Bishop's rents. The Bishop even ceded the fair and the
markets, with their profits and tolls. Yet he retained his
Hundred Court and his Court Leet or Lawday, at which the
Bailiff and Burgesses, together with all the adult male in-
habitants, were bound to appear.
Notwithstanding these liberal concessions and express
stipulations of autonomy, fortified by all the paraphernalia
of parchment and seal, we do not find, in actual practice, that
the Bailiff and Burgesses of Alresford amounted to much more
than the Mayor and Aldermen of Petersfield. Discouraged
by a great fire in 1689, which swept away church, market
buildings, and council house, they gave up holding the Three
Weeks' Court, which was their only machinery for making
By-laws, etc. Throughout the eighteenth century we see
them, without jurisdiction of their own, contentedly using the
Bishop's Court to get' their officers including even the
Bailiff appointed and their regulations enforced. The
markets and fairs became steadily less frequented and less
valuable. But the little Corporate body still derived some
revenue from stallage and tolls, and retained the ownership
of a few cottages, which kept up some fragments of Municipal
dignity, allowed of a few charities, and provided an annual
feast. Undiscovered by "the Municipal Corporation Com-
missioners of 1835, this miniature Corporation, having only
one paid officer, the Deputy Hayward, with twenty shillings
a year, lingered on until 1887, when its property was, by
scheme of the Charity Commission, transferred to trustees for
charitable purposes, and the Corporation itself was finally
dissolved. 1
1 The Bishop of Winchester created other Manorial Boroughs on his vast
estates, enjoying various degrees of autonomy. One of these was Gosport, which
always styled itself a Borough, and in 1684 strenuously defended its independ-
ence against the claim of the Mayor of the adjoining Borough of Portsmouth to
exercise jurisdiction and take certain ancient dues. From the MS. records
of the Bishop's " Court Leet and Court Baron" which we have consulted from
1623 to 1835, we gather that this Court was held by the Bishop's Steward
twice a year. There was, however, also a "Three Weeks' Court" held by the
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 165
In the little " Borough " of Altrincham 1 in Cheshire in
1689, and for long after, probably numbering only a few
hundreds of families we have an interesting example of a
Lord's Borough of great antiquity, having, in strict law very
little autonomy, and still less of independent Municipal
structure, and yet contriving to perform, throughout the
eighteenth century, practically the whole civil government of the
town, including most of the work done elsewhere by the Parish
Vestry and the Justices in Petty Sessions. The " Court Leet
and Court of Pleas," which we may regard as the descendant
of the Portmanmoot or Borough Court conceded by Seignorial
Charter about 1290, was one of the Hierarchy of Courts of
the Barony of Dunham Massey. 2 Held every six months
Clerk or Bailiff, nominally on behalf of the Lord of the Manor. The principal
part was played by the Homage or "Grand Jury," the members of which were,
we imagine, summoned by the officers whom the former Jury had itself
nominated. This Jury submitted annually the names of persons to fill the
offices of "Bailiff"' (called also Beadle in 1701), Constable (at first one only,
latterly twelve), Overseer of the Ferry or Passage, Ale-taster or Aleconner,
Coal-meter, and Cryer. We find the Jury in 1623 levying a rate for erecting
a cage and stocks, and making various regulations for the cleansing of the
streets and ditches. A sixty years' gap in the records at this point may have
coincided with the encroachments of Portsmouth. From 1684 to the middle
of the eighteenth century the presentments show us a government of the
ordinary type, the Jury struggling to maintain the authority of the Court,
fining absentees, presenting the common nuisances of obstruction of the streets,
filthy hogsties, dirt and dung left unremoved, pigs wandering at large, etc.
In 1698 "a standing law" is made that "every housekeeper do once every
week for ever cleanse the kennel " ; and another that ' ' no person do from
henceforth keep above one boat to let, to work " in the passage or ferry by
which so many of the men of Gosport lived, and then to let it only to "settled
inhabitants." From about 1750 the presentments become rapidly fewer, and
the Court sinks to a mere apparatus for annually appointing the Bailiff and
Constables. Without Charter, without property, and without a Corporate
Magistracy, the claims of Gosport to be a Borough seem to have been forgotten ;
it was not discovered by the Municipal Corporation Commission in 1835 ; and
it remained without effective local autonomy until the formation of a Local
Board (now Urban District Council) under the Public Health Acts.
1 For Altrincham the student should consult the MS. records of the Courts
of the Barony of Dunham Massey, 1689-1835, and of Altrincham, 1658-1835,
for access to which we are indebted to the Earl of Stamford and to Mr. Hall,
the courteous Steward of the estate ; First Report of Municipal Corporation
Commission, 1835, vol. iv. p. 2575 ; ditto, 1880, pp. 9 and 652 ; Historical
Antiquities, by Sir Peter Leycester, 1673, pp. 203-204 ; History of Cheshire, by
G. Ormerod, 1819, vol. i. pp. 399, 417 ; in 1828 edition, vol. i. p. 536, etc. ;
History of Altrincham and Bowden, by A. Ingham, 1879.
2 At the Court of the Barony of Dunham Massey we see amerced inhabitants
and officers (e.g. Surveyors of Highways) of Altrincham among other places.
New Freeholders are presented by the " Freehold Jury." Among the names of
the "Leet Jury " we note those of Altrincham residents.
166 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
before the Lord's Steward and the "Mayor of the Borough,"
and attended by a " Grand Jury " or Grand Inquest of
Freeholders of the Borough, it elected annually all the officers
of the town ; presenting, in the case of the Mayor, three
names from which the Steward chose one. Besides a
Mayor, a Bailiff, and two Constables, along with such usual
officers as Burleymen, Finders, Ale-tasters, Dog-muzzlers,
Scavengers, and Market-lookers, we see this tribunal appoint-
ing its own " Laylayers " to assess and collect the rates that it
levied; and even, throughout the eighteenth century, the
Surveyors of Highways and the Overseers of the Poor. 1 In
the background (just as we were at Bamburgh) we are conscious
of separate meetings of the Burgesses or Freeholders some-
times of " the Mayor and Burgesses " who may perhaps have
carried on the executive government between the six-monthly
Courts. These Burgesses were, for the first half of the
eighteenth century, systematically " admitted " by the Jury at
the Lord's Court, and sworn by the Steward, on their succession
to their burgages, serving in due course the various offices in
rotation. After 1759 this formal admission seems to have
been disused, and the Freeholders fade out of sight. A
remnant of the former custom was, however, preserved, in the
presentment, year by year, of one Freeholder as a " colt " or
recruit to the Grand Jury.
What was remarkable at Altrincham, down to the latter
part of the eighteenth century, was the amplitude of the
jurisdiction of the Borough Court. It not only regulated its
extensive Town Field, cultivated in the usual strips, and the
wide common pastures, 2 but also sanctioned the enclosure and
1 The appointment of "Lay lay era" or Assessors at the Court continued
down to 1839, at least. Assessors of the Land Tax were also appointed by the
Court. We suspect that the nomination or appointment of Overseers of the
Poor and Surveyors of Highways passed out of its hands early in the nineteenth
century, when a church was built at Altrincham, and we assume that local
Vestry meetings then began to be held.
2 " Ordered that the Town Field be enclosed ... on the 2nd of February
each year, and that person that neglects making up his payments by that
time appointed shall be amerced in ten shillings. . . . That the Pinners of the
Town Field neglecting doing his office from the 2nd day of February yearly till
such time as the last or least parcel of corn or hay therein shall safely be gotten
out by the owner thereof ; that if any damages should happen by either horse,
cow, sheep, or swine, etc., . . . the Pinners shall be liable to make good treble
damage, . . . and that for every default made by tethering, or leasowing in the
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 167
improvement of successive portions of land by individual
owners. It closed footpaths when it thought fit upon any
lands within the Borough. It was exceptionally active in
enforcing the scouring of ditches, and also in defining the
boundaries between individual properties. 1 But the same
Grand Jury of Freeholders paid equal attention to what we
may call police and sanitary functions. They dealt with
tumults and affrays, finding in 1716 that one J. E. " has
made a disturbance and tumult of a high nature," for which
they "do amerce him in ten shillings." 2 The Altrincham
Court even rivalled the Manchester Court Leet in the
elaborateness of its By-laws regulating the personal conduct
of the inhabitants, especially as regards Sabbath breaking,
the harbouring of " inmates," carrying " fire from house to
house uncovered," 8 and the fouling of the Town Wells. 4 It
gradually accumulated a long array of officers, each charged
to enforce some particular obligation. The Court was a
particularly active Market authority, though all the profits of
the Market, like those of the Cornmill, 5 went to the Lord. It
even performed various Municipal services, paving and
lighting the streets, maintaining a water-supply by public
pumps and fountains, keeping a fire-engine, 6 and undertaking,
by a Municipal Bakehouse, to provide accommodation for all
the baking for hire within the Borough even enforcing, for
the sake of regulating the hours, etc., a strict monopoly of
this service, and laying down the " rules of baking." T
night, shall forfeit ten shillings " (MS. Records, Altrincham Corporation, 26th
April 1699).
In 1698 the Pinners of the Town Field present persons for "tethering his
little blind mare in the same Town Field and breaking the tether, and going
loose eating George Clayton Junior's pease," and for "tethering his nag and
breaking the tether in the Town Field in the open day to the damage of the
corn" (ibid. 12th October 1698).
1 Ibid. 20th October 1773 ; 14th October 1778.
2 Ibid. 25th April 1716. 3 Ibid. 15th April 1719.
* " If any one wash his hands or feet at the Town Well [he] shall pay
twelvepence " (ibid.).
6 In 1712 various persons were amerced for "withdrawing their grist from,"
or "not grinding at" the Lord's mill at Dunham (ibid. 23rd April and 1st
October 1712).
8 Ibid. 15th April 1762.
7 " We do make an order that no one do make a common practice to allow
others to bake in his oven to the hindrance of the Common Bakehouse of the
Town, on pain of sixpence" (ibid. 21st October 1696).
" We find by a former order that the Baker of the Bakehouse has disregarded
168 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
But what distinguishes Altrincham, so far as we know,
from the Lord's Courts and Manorial Boroughs in other parts
of England, was its curious usurpation of all the civil powers
of the Parish and its Vestry. The Court, by its Grand Jury,
not only appointed, in flagrant disregard of the statutes, the
Surveyors of Highways and the Overseers of the Poor, 1 but
also received and allowed their accounts, and gave them
frequent and peremptory orders. 2 We find the Court even
deciding what Statute Labour and Team Duty should be
exacted for the roads, and contracting in the matter with
the Turnpike Trustees. The Court took repeated action
against the harbouring of inmates. 3 It governed the poor,
ordering those in receipt of relief to be " badged," 4 directing
particular children to be apprenticed, 5 compounding with
putative fathers for bastard children, 6 appointing a salaried
Overseer, and, in 1750, contracting at eighteenpence per
week per head for the maintenance of all the inmates of the
workhouse. 6 We discover the same all-embracing Court
ordering the destruction of sparrows (" a very injurious bird
within the limits of this Township ") r ; paying for the prose-
the order of drawing it at such an hour, being six o'clock in the evening ; and
do make a further order that the said Baker of the Common Bakehouse for the
future do heat the oven at a sufficient time that he may draw for supper at six
o'clock" (MS. Records, Altrincham Corporation, 4th April 1711).
In 1741 the Baker was again peremptorily ordered "to set bread in the
public oven at seven o'clock " in summer, and eight o'clock in winter, "and not
before" (ibid. 14th October 1741).
In 1743 the tenant of the Bakehouse was ordered to bake "so early in the
morning as that the inhabitants . . . may have their puddings, pies, and other
eatables out of the oven precisely at twelve o'clock " (ibid. 1 2th October
1743).
Owing to the " Public Bakehouse " being insufficient, a new one is ordered to
be built, and the prohibition of other baking for hire is repeated (ibid. 19th
April 1769). The Baker continued to be negligent, and was amerced (ibid. 21st
October 1772). Two Jurymen were deputed to inspect, and "to regulate the
rules of baking" (ibid. 6th May 1778).
1 Ibid. 26th April 1720.
2 See, for appointment of Surveyors, ibid. 15th May 1717 ; for instructions
to them, 7th October 1725 ; for regulation of Team Duty and Statute Labour,
22nd October 1760 ; for agreement with the local Turnpike Trustees, 20th
October 1773.
s In 1709, for instance four Aldermen were ordered to " go through the Town
and review what inmates are come into the Town, and give a full account to the
Overseers" (ibid. 12th October 1709).
4 Ibid. 15th April 1719. " 6 Ibid. 26th April 1720.
e Ibid. 13th April 1758.
7 Ibid. 16th October 1755, 19th April 1763, and 22nd April 1789.
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 169
cution of felons l ; and finding (by hiring substitutes) the
quota of militiamen demanded from the Township or
Borough. 2 There was, in fact, throughout the eighteenth
century no Vestry meeting in Altrincham.
The Altrincham Court continued to be held long after
the close of the eighteenth century continues, in fact, even
to this day (1907), formally to elect its "Mayor" and other
officers. But after the close of the eighteenth century we
see its functions shrinking gradually into those of a mere
Leet, presenting petty nuisances. The trial of civil suits,
which we find down to 1662 recorded in the same minutes
as the other business, seems, in the course of the eighteenth
century, to have become detached as a separate Court Baron, 8
which went on hearing an ever-dwindling number of pleas
down to 1793. The regulation of the commonfields gradually
ceases, presumably with the progress of enclosure. From the
first quarter of the eighteenth century we are conscious of
" Town's Meetings " of inhabitants, occasionally ordered and
paid for by the Borough Court, at which various common deci-
sions were taken. 4 Towards the end of the eighteenth century
the Constables, the Surveyors, and the Overseers seem increas-
ingly to have regarded these Town's Meetings as their real
superiors, rather than the Borough Court, with its Jury of Bur-
gesses, now representing only a small minority of the residents.
In 1802 the Borough got a church built having hitherto wor-
shipped at the church of the extensive Parish of Bowden and
presently started Churchwardens of its own, and formal Vestry
meetings, with which the Town's Meetings probably became
merged. 6 As the local organ of civil government, the Borough
Court had been superseded by the Township Vestry and the
Petty and Special Sessions of the County Justices of the Peace. 6
1 MS. Records, Altrincham Corporation, 12th May 1736.
2 Ibid. 15th October 1759.
* In 1712 the Borough Court fines a man twenty shillings " for proceeding
at law against R. C." presumably before some other tribunal "contrary to
several orders of this Court" (ibid. 1st October 1712).
4 " We agree to have no more Town's Meetings but what's at the expense of
those that appear, and to meet at the Court-house" (ibid. 5th May 1742).
6 We see them, for instance, adopting the Lighting Act, just like an ancient
autonomous parish. Provision was specially made in the Municipal Corporations
Act of 1883 for a continuance of the ancient appointments of Mayor, etc., at
Altrincham (46 and 47 Viet. c. 18, sec. 23).
8 The neighbouring Borough of Stockport, also established by Seignorial
i;o THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
More remarkable in various respects was the working
constitution of Lewes, an ancient market-place and " Borough
Charter in the thirteenth century, had many features in common with Altrinc-
ham. Down to the middle of the eighteenth century, whilst their formal con-
stitutions were almost identical, the Lord's Steward seems, at Stockport, to have
retained the real power. It was the Steward who selected the Jury of the Great
Court Leet or Portmote, from among the freeholders (who were all required to
be sworn and admitted as Burgesses) ; the Steward chose annually four persons
as suitable to be Mayor, of whom the Jury elected one ; the Steward paid the
Mayor a small salary from the Lord's funds, and required him to be in attend-
ance at the Lord's Court ; the Steward even selected the Constables, for formal
appointment by the Court. But the industrial development which, in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, transformed the two square miles of rural town-
ship around the village of Stockport into an irregular agglomeration of mills,
factories, and workmen's cottages, and numbering, by 1801, more than 14,000,
and by 1831, more than 25,000 persons, deprived the Lord of the Manor of all
control over anything but his actual rents. The jurisdiction of his Court Baron
in petty debt cases quietly faded away about 1764 ; the presentments of nuisances
at his Court Leet became steadily more perfunctory and less respected, partly, no
doubt, because the disparity between them and the actual needs of the town
became ever more glaring ; an Inclosure Act in 1805 and a Court of Requests Act
in 1806 incidentally superseded ancient seignorial rights ; until finally, in 1826,
the principal inhabitants completed the decay of the Manorial authority by
obtaining a Local Act, under which the paving, cleansing, lighting and watching
the town was taken over by a body of Street Commissioners. As at Altrincham,
there had been, at Stockport, no Vestry meetings ; not even for the great parish
of which the township formed only a part. By a peculiar custom the four
Churchwardens were, down to our own day, chosen annually by the four Lords
of Manors in the parish, who were called (from 1464 at least), the " prsepositi "
or "the four posts" of the parish. This was all the more remarkable in that
the lands of these proprietors were exempt from the Church Rate, their share
being paid out of the Poor Rate for the whole parish. The Churchwardens so
chosen rendered no accouuts to any Vestry (Stockport Ancient and Modern,
by H. Heginbotham, vol. i., 1877, pp. 199, 211, 268).
Notwithstanding the absence of any Royal Charter or Corporate Justices,
and the complete decay into which had fallen any powers that this Manorial
Borough may once have exercised, Stockport was included in the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835 as a Municipal Borough, whilst Manchester and
Salford, having similar thirteenth - century Seignorial Charters, were, like
Altrincham, denied this privilege. We attribute this distinction partly to the
insignificant fact that Stockport's chief officer was called a Mayor, and not
a Boroughreeve ; and partly to the accident that the Municipal Corporation
Commissioners had no detailed information showing the purely Manorial
character of Stockport before them, owing to the refusal of T. J. Hogg, one of
their number, to present, with what he considered undue haste, the reports on
the towns that he had visited.
For Stockport we have relied on the Report on Certain Boroughs by T. J.
Hogg (Municipal Corporation Commission), 1838, p. 129 ; Home Office Domestic
State Papers and Magistrates Book (in Public Record Office) for 1818-1819 and
1835 ; Stockport Ancient and Modern, by H. Heginbotham, 1882-1892 ; History
of the County Palatine and City of Chester, by G. Ormerod, vol. iii. pp. 788-806,
edition of 1882 ; East Cheshire, by J. P. Earwaker, vol. i., 1877, pp. 329-421 ;
Stockport Inclosure Act, 45 George III. c. 91 (1805) ; Stockport Court of
Requests Act, 46 George III. c. 114 (1806) ; Stockport Paving and Lighting
Act, 7 George IV. c. 118 (1826).
THE LORDS BOROUGH 171
Town " of Sussex, once of considerable importance, and in
1689, though much decayed, still sharing with Chichester the
honour of being the capital of the county. 1 We find it at
that date without anything in the nature of a Chartered
Corporation, divided into four parishes ; styled a Borough, and
governed for all Municipal purposes as a single unit, under a
peculiar close body. " There is, and always hath been," records
the Steward of the Manor in 1662, " time out of mind within
this Borough a Society of the wealthier and discreeter sort of
the townsmen, commonly called ' The Twelve/ out of which
society the Constables are always chosen, the elder, of course,
according to his seniority ; the younger is chosen by the elder,
with the consent of the greater part of the Jury (sworn at the
Lawday), out of such of the Society as were never formerly
Constables within this Borough ; for never was it known that
any man was twice younger Constable or twice Headborough ;
and these Constables then elected make choice of their Head-
boroughs with consent as aforesaid (of the greater part of the
Jury) and of the other officers before remembered, at the Law-
day, without any contradiction or altercation by the Steward.
The Society known as 'The Twelve' are never so few as
twelve, nor more than twenty-four, and upon death or removal
are supplied by election of the greater part of the subsisting
Society. Town charges disbursed by the Constables for the
common good of the inhabitants are yearly viewed, examined,
allowed, and taxed in August or September by the Twelve,
who in confirmation thereof subscribe their names to the
Assessment, which is a sufficient warrant to the Headboroughs
for the collection thereof. Now, town charges are of this or
the like nature, viz. 40s. per annum to the Clock-keeper and
1 We have not examined the MS. records of Lewes, which have been well
extracted in Ancient and Modern History of Lewes and Brighthelmston, by
William Lee, 1795, and The History and Antiquities of Lewes, by T. W. Hors-
field, 1824-1827 ; see also the papers by W. Figg and Rev. E. Turner on "Old
Lewes " and ' ' The Ancient Merchant Gild of Lewes and the subsequent Muni-
cipal Regulations of the Town" in Sussex Archaeological Society's Collections,
vol. xiii., 1861, and vol. xxi., 1869, pp. 90-107; The Gild Merchant, by C.
Gross, 1890, vol. ii. p. 145 ; History . . . of Sussex, by T. W. Horsfield,
1835, vol. i. p. 201 ; Historical . . . Account of the Coast of Sussex, by J. D.
Parry, 1833, p. 325 ; History of . . . Surrey and Sussex, by Thomas Allen, 1829-
1830, vol. ii. p. 543 ; Victoria County History of Sussex, vol. i., 1905, pp. 382-383.
It was overlooked by the Municipal Corporation Commission of 1835, but was
reported on by that of 1880 (Report, Part I. pp. 60, 144-145).
172 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
Bell-ringer; payment for mending and repairing the market-
house, sessions house, bridge, stocks, cucking-stool, pillory,
butts for whipping rogues, conveying malefactors to gaol, for
the suppression of disorders and restraining offenders ; also of
later times disbursements for King's provision of wheat, oats,
coals, carriages, etc. ; brazen weights and measures ; charges
on the shire town." l
What may once have been the exact distribution of
authority in Lewes between the Manorial Court and the
peculiar Fellowship of the Twelve, is not easy to determine.
During the seventeenth century, at any rate, we see the power
of the Twelve steadily waning, their functions of passing By-
laws and taxing the town being gradually assumed by the
Leet Jury. Towards the end of that century, we are told,
" political and religious divisions . . . seem to have paved the
way for the above-noted encroachments on the ancient rights
of the Fellowship," until in 1709 the record of their meetings
comes to an end, and in 1720 their last surviving member
dies. From this time forth Lewes was governed by its two
" High Constables," annually presented by the Jury at the
Lord's Court, and sworn in by the Steward; by the Head-
boroughs nominated by the High Constables ; by the Lord's
Court itself, which occasionally made By-laws and suppressed
nuisances ; and by quite " extra - legal " meetings of the
inhabitants, " publicly convened in their Town Hall " by the
High Constables. The government of Lewes, in fact, during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bears a singular
resemblance to that which we have described at Braintree,
which did not claim to be a Borough, but which had the same
kind of Fellowship or Company, working in close connection
with the Lord's Court, equally coming to an end at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, to be in both cases
succeeded by public meetings of the inhabitants. But Braintree
was a single parish, and its Fellowship was regarded as merely
1 History of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824, p. 174, quoting an account of,
1662. "The Constables, in conjunction with the Twelve, exercised the
privilege of decreeing laws for the due regulation of the town, and even pushed
their authority so far as to commit to prison, or to the stocks, those who
ventured to question the legality of their decrees, and refused to conform to their
requirements" (ibid. p. 176). There had also been a subordinate body called
the Twenty-four ("The Ancient Merchant Gild of Lewes," by Rev. E. Turner,
Su&sex Archaeological Collections, vol. xxi. , 1869, pp. 90-107).
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 173
a Close Vestry, to be in due course replaced by an Open
Vestry. 1 The four little parishes of Lewes, claiming collectively
to rank as a Hundred, cannot be supposed to have had one
Vestry in common, either close or open. Moreover, the Lewes
Fellowship levied a " Town Tax " upon the whole Borough for
the Constables' expenses, including whatever was laid out for
the common purposes of the town, whenever the little property
of the Borough did not suffice. Payment of this rate which
certainly seems of doubtful legality was apparently usually
made without question, but it was spasmodically resisted as
early as 1584, when it was enforced, as it had been "time out
of mind," by distraint and sale. 2 We find it again resisted in
1 So too, at Brighthelmston, the little fishing village whose development
into the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton we have already described, there
seems to have been in the sixteenth century a government like that of Lewes
or Braintree we know not whether to call it a Manorial Borough. " From
time immemorial the government of the Borough (or Lower Town) with which
the [Upper] Town was connected, was entrusted to two . . . Headboroughs who
sat alternately in the Borough Court, or together if necessity required it, and
the Jurors, or sworn Assessors of this Court, were selected from such of the
Decenners or Frankpledges as were in attendance, having no causes to be tried.
Hence the origin of the Society of the Twelve, of whom such frequent mention
is made in the Books of Customs, and whose duty it appears to have been to
act as a Committee of Counsel to the Headboroughs, thereby securing to them-
selves rights and privileges which ' the landmen ' [of the Upper Town] did
not possess. . . . They claimed the exclusive right of composing the Jury
of the Borough Court, and on the Lawday. The choice of the Constable,
as well as of the Headboroughs, rested chiefly with them. They filled up
vacancies in their own body, and pleaded immunity from the Borough Common
Fine." But this supremacy of the fishermen did not endure. The Elizabethan
Commissioners of 1580 revised the "customs" so that the government was
shared equally between those "of the sea" and those "of the land." The
prosperity of the Lower Town seems, however, rapidly to have declined, and
it was finally ruined by the great storm of 1703. The Society of the Twelve
each of whom, as at Braintree, had once had his own "street or circuit" to
superintend came to an end about 1772 ("The Early History of Brighton,"
by Rev. E. Turner, in Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. ii., 1849, pp. 38-52).
As at Braintree, the fact that Brighton formed but one parish resulted in
the quasi - municipal powers lapsing to the Open Vestry already described.
Another case of connection between the Lord's Court and a "Twelve" is
afforded by East Stonehouse, Devonshire, a Manor included in the parish of
St. Andrew's, Plymouth, but never in Plymouth Borough. In 1594 it was
completely under the rule of its Lord, but regulations were made with " the
consent and frank assent of twelve discreet and able persons of and within the
said town and liberties" (History of Devonshire, by R. N. Worth, 1895, pp.
226-229).
2 "Here I think fit to remember," says an old authority, "that about the
twenty-sixth year of Queen Elizabeth, ten of the most aged of the Twelve came to
John Shirley, Esq., afterwards Serjeant at Law, whose clerk I then was, to
have his opinion what course might be taken against such refractory persons
as refused to pay town charges assessed as aforesaid. But before he delivered
174 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
1721, when the members of the Court Leet Jury agree to
indemnify the Constables for any costs they might be put to
in enforcing it. 1 In 1765, when the Borough had lost most
of its property, and the Town Tax was more than ever needed,
an adjourned Lawday results in a similar indemnity by " fifty-
six of the most respectable inhabitants of the Borough." 2
Finally, in 1772, the public meeting resolves "that the
Constables and Jury at the Court Leet or Lawday chosen,
shall and do continue to have power to make and collect a
Town Tax for defraying the necessary expenses of the Borough." 8
Thus fortified, the High Constables and Jury seem to have
gone on levying such a Town Tax as was required, in 1822-
1823 amounting even to as much as one shilling in the pound. 4
Another variety of the Lord's Borough one exhibiting
all the worst features of the close Municipal Corporations
that we shall hereafter describe is seen in the Mayor and
Burgesses of Arundel, the little town nestling under the
ancient Sussex castle of the Duke of Norfolk. 5 Here the
his resolution he demanded of them what they used to do formerly in the
like cases. Their answer was that, time out of mind, they had ever levied such
taxation by distress after three days, the tax not satisfied, to sell the goods
distrained, rendering the overplus to the owners thereof which course he told
them was warrantable by usage, and so justifiable by law. Distresses, by
opinion of Serjeant Heath and Mr. Foster, are justifiable by law, and may
legally be maintained, being made and confirmed by common consent of the
inhabitants of the whole Borough time beyond all memory, consisting of four
parishes, attendant at one Lawday, and that the charges are public, lying
upon the whole inhabitants as in one Borough, and not as divided parishes "
(Ancient and Modern History of Lewes and Brighthelmston, by William Lee,
1795, pp. 191-192).
1 Ibid. p. 211. a Ibid. p. 212.
3 History of Lewes, by T. W. Horsfield, 1824, p. 211.
4 Ibid. p. 229. This little Manorial Borough, not being reported on in
1835, went on unchanged, the High Constables and Jury levying annually their
extra-legal Town Tax to eke out the Corporate revenues. By 1880, when the
population had grown to 6000, it yielded 70 a year. In 1806 the principal
inhabitants had obtained a Local Act constituting a body of Street Commissioners
to pave, light, cleanse, and watch the Borough (ibid. p. 223, and Appendix,
p. xliii). Lewes was created an ordinary Municipal Corporation in 1881,
contrary to the recommendation of the Municipal Corporation Commission of
1880 (Report, Part I. p. xi).
6 MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation, 1539-1835; ditto of "Borough
Court," 1758-1835; MS. Archives, Court Leet, 1722-1740; First Report of
Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 672 ; History
and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel, by Rev. M. A. Tierney,
1834 ; Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. vii. 1854 ; History of . . .
Western . . . Sussex, by J. Dallaway, 1815-30, vol. ii. Part I. pp. 90-183 ;
History . . . of Sussex, by T. W. Horsfield, 1835, vol. ii. pp. 122-132 ;
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 175
organisation of an ancient "Borough," mentioned in Domesday,
had been defined by " articles of agreement " ratified and
recorded by two of the Judges of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
on the occasion of some dispute, 1 and this working constitution,
unfortified by any Charter, remained practically intact down
to 1835. In the various manuscript records of the old
Corporation between 1689 and 1835, we can watch the
administration carried on in the name of the Borough by
the " Company " or " Society " of Burgesses, a close body of
indefinite number, 2 consisting in practice only of about a
dozen members, and open only to those whom the existing
members chose to admit. This body, existing independently
of any other authority, owned valuable water meadows,
cottages, market and quay dues, and the Town Shambles. It
held the " Borough Court " every three weeks, which like
the Court Baron granted to the men of Alresford not only
determined pleas of debt and trespass, but also made By-laws,
confirmed the appointment of officers, and received and acted
on presentments of nuisances, short weights and measures,
and individual defaults.
Meanwhile the Lawday, or Court Leet and View of
Frankpledge of the Earl of Arundel, was being held annually
by his Steward. At this Court the members of the
" Company " or " Society " of Burgesses, and indeed all the
adult male inhabitants, were bound to attend, and the Mayor
was chosen. But the members of the Jury, who, as we
have seen, were the primum mobile of such a Court, were
selected by the outgoing Mayor, who was expressly bound
to return to the Steward a majority of the Company or
Society of Burgesses, adding to them " so many other of the
principal inhabitants as shall make up the full number of,
four-and-twenty according to the ancient custom." 8 Thus
History of the Counties of Surrey and Sussex, by T. Allen, 1829-1830, vol. ii.
pp. 520-524 ; Victoria County History of Sussex, vol. i., 1905, pp. 383-384.
1 In these "articles" (to be found in the MS. records of the Borough)
the men of Arundel make good their claim to be free from any interference
from the officers of the Hundred Court of the Earl of Arundel, thereby re-
minding us of the existence of a Hierarchy of Courts in the once more extensive
Honour of Arundel, which, in the eleventh century, included the two whole
Rapes of Chichester and Arundel, and more than 90 square miles.
2 There are traces of its having been twenty-four in number.
8 Compare the similar custom at Alnwick, described at p. 191.
176 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
it was the Close Body of the Company or Society of Burgesses
that controlled the Jury. The Jury chose two of the Close
Body, out of whom " the Commons, not being of the Jury," or,
as we read later, " the scot and lot men," elected one to be
Mayor for the ensuing year. All the other officers two
Constables, two Portreeves, two Aleconners, two Searchers
and Sealers of Leather, and two Affeerors were nominated
by the Jury, which also " presented " the usual urban nuisances.
We need not describe the complicated interaction of
the Company or Society of Burgesses and the Lord's Court.
To all intents and purposes this exclusive little group of
Burgesses, though preserving the form of subordination to the
Lord's Court, had become the sole Municipal authority of the
town, and completely master of their own proceedings. We
cannot discover that, beyond maintaining a certain Municipal
pomp and ceremony, this Company or Society of Burgesses
was of any appreciable utility to the inhabitants. It is true
that they held the Borough Court, but they charged high
fees to suitors, and they let both the civil and criminal sides
of this tribunal gradually sink to mere forms. 1 At one time
half the Church Rate was contributed from Corporate funds,
to the ease of the inhabitants, but this was refused after 1822.
The Mayor and Burgesses claimed to be the " Bridgemasters "
of the ancient stone bridge over the Arun, but they threw
the cost of its repair upon the Poor Rate. They levied all
the dues they could on the scanty market. They owned the
quay, and exacted tolls on all goods landed from the river. 2
They reserved for themselves the filling of all the local offices,
the ex-Mayor even by custom always becoming one of
the parish Overseers for a year. 3 But all this became, during
the eighteenth century, mainly a matter of ceremony and
routine, the duties being neglected or left to the two or
1 It seems from the scanty records that the so-called "Borough Court"
took over from the Court Leet after about 1740 the work of dealing with the
presentments of the usual urban nuisances and defaults, which we find the
Constables and Portreeves making between 1758 and 1800 in the Borough
Court, after which these, too, become perfunctory and formal.
2 The paving, cleansing, lighting, watching, and improving the town had
been abandoned to a body of Street Commissioners, established by Local Act
(25 George III. c. 90) in 1785. The Mayor and Burgesses were ex officio
Commissioners, along with other citizens named in the Act, and qualified by
property ownership.
8 MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation, 4th April 1769.
THE LORD'S BOROUGH 177
three paid subordinates. The scanty manuscript records of
their proceedings make it plain that the Burgesses regarded
themselves, not as trustees, but as absolute owners of their
revenues, which they shamelessly shared among their members.
The pasturage on the water meadows was reserved exclusively
for the members' cattle ; the members got profitable allotments
in severalty and beneficial leases. 1 Serving the office of
Mayor, a privilege which came round to each Burgess every
eight or ten years, was rewarded by an allowance of 100,
" the profits, dues, rents, and benefits arising from the quay
and the butchers' shambles," and other perquisites. 2 The
" feastings " of the little company were almost incessant. At
each three-weekly meeting of the Borough Court there was
a feast to the Burgesses and their wives and all the officers.
At every meeting of the Burgesses there was a dinner. At
the annual Court Leet there was a dinner for the Burgesses
and Jury. On the annual receipt of a buck from the Duke
of Norfolk there was a " venison feast." 8 At " the going
forth " of the retiring Mayor there was a " great feast." At
every admission of a new Burgess there was "a handsome
entertainment of eatables and drinkables for the Mayor and
old Burgesses and their wives." 4 If we mistake not, the
Mayor and Burgesses of Arundel must have provided them-
selves with a costly banquet nearly every other week
throughout the year. Nor were these feasts extended to
the town at large. The Burgesses repeatedly instruct the
Mayor not to invite non-burgesses, under penalty of a fine. 5
So profitable and attractive was membership of this convivial
Company, closely cemented by family relationship, identity of
religious creed and similarity of political opinions, that the
fee exacted from those who were favoured with the privilege
of Admission was gradually raised from 7 in 1726 to no
less than a hundred guineas in 1828, in addition to a
sumptuous banquet. 6 By 1833 the Company, now styling
1 MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation, 30th April 1744 ; History of . . .
Arundel, by Rev. M. A. Tierney, 1834, p. 709.
2 See the list of Mayors, 1798-1826, in MS. Minutes, Arundel Corporation.
8 Discontinued after 1831, ibid. 7th June 1831.
4 Ibid. 8th Oct. 1741 and 27th Nov. 1830.
5 Ibid. 12th Sept. 1649 ; ditto, 1701.
6 Ibid. 3rd Oct. 1726, 21st Sept. 1738, llth March 1789, 17th Nov. 1796,
17th April 1828, and 27th Nov. 1830.
VOL. II. PT. I N
178 THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
itself a Municipal Corporation, though claiming no Corporate
Magistracy, had definitely shrunk to a fixed number of thirteen
Burgesses, one of whom served as a Mayor. Their admitted
Corporate revenues seem then to have amounted to about
300 a year. With the record that we have indicated it
is not surprising that the Mayor and Burgesses of Arundel
thought it prudent, in 1833, to keep all inquiries at arm's
length. They refused to allow even the Duke of Norfolk's
chaplain to complete his ducal history from their records. 1
The Government fared only slightly better. The Mayor and
Burgesses of Arundel formally declared that they regarded
the issue of a Koyal Commission for an inquiry into the
Municipal Corporations as "an exercise of the prerogative
which they are advised is illegal, and which they think would
be dangerous to the liberty of the subject ... a violation of
the Bill of Rights, an intrusion on the rights of Englishmen " ;
and though they did not persist in refusing to have anything
to do with the Commission, they confined their information
to the barest minimum. 2
(e) The Enfranchised Manorial Borough
It is, as we already stated, not easy to draw a line between
a Manorial Borough in which the Corporate body was as
practically autonomous as that of Arundel, and those Boroughs,
demonstrably Manorial in their origin, in which the connection
with the Lord's Court had become only formal. In the two
neighbouring Boroughs of Christchurch and Lymington, in
Hampshire, 3 where the population in 1831 was between one
1 History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel, by Rev. M. A.
Tierney, 1834, preface, p. vii.
2 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii.
p. 667.
3 For Christchurch, see the large MS. volume in which an extensive series
of miscellaneous records (1485-1857) is bound up ; MS. Acts of Privy Council,
9th and 18th November 1670 ; First Report of Municipal Corporation Com-
mission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p. 1251; ditto, 1880, parti, p. 24 ; part ii.
p. 108 ; The Antiquities of the Priory of Christchurch . . . with some general
particulars of the Castle and Borough, by Benjamin Ferrey and E. W. Bayley,
1834 and 1841. For Lymington, see MS. Minutes of Corporation, 1574-1835;
First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii. p.
743 ; History of Lymington, by David Garrow, 1825.; Records of the Corporation
of the Borough of New Lymington, by C. S. Barbe, 1848 ; Old Times revisited in
the Borough and Parish of Lymington, by Edward King, 1879 and 1900. See
THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH 179
and two thousand, the connection with the Lord of the Manor
had, by the end of the seventeenth century, sunk into nothing
more substantial than the ceremonial swearing in of the in-
dependently chosen Mayor and other officers at the Lord's
Court, and the payment of a fee-farm rent to the representative
of some ancient grantor. In each of these Boroughs there
was a Close Body of Mayor and Burgesses, of unknown origin,
existing by prescription independently of any other authority,
occasionally called " the Company," appointing all the officers, 1
and disposing of the trifling town lands and the equally
insignificant tolls and dues of market and harbour. Neither
Corporation held any Court, though there are traces of informal
arrangements among the Burgesses for compulsory arbitration
in disputes. 2 During the seventeenth century both these
Corporations had been active in making By-laws for the good
government of their Boroughs, organising the " Watch and
Ward," setting the Assize of Bread, repairing bridges and
causeways, paving the streets, and even " paying the poor."
In the latter part of that century we see their activities
dwindle away. They continued, however, to control their
markets and their little harbours, and maintain some Municipal
dignity. 8 By the end of the eighteenth century they had still
also, for both these and other neighbouring Boroughs, the paper on "Early
Boroughs in Hampshire," by T. W. Shore, in Archaeological Review, vol. iv.
1889; Topographical Remarks relating to . . . Hampshire, by Richard Warner,
1793 ; General History of Hampshire, by B. B. Woodward, T. 0. Wilks, and 0.
Lockhart, 1861-1869.
1 At Christchurch the earlier dependence of the Borough had left a mark in
the oath of the Burgesses, who swore on admission to "maintain all accustomed
and ancient services of right belonging to the Lord of the Castle of the Honour
of Christchurch, and now in the inheritance of the Right Honourable Henry
Earl of Clarendon, whose Burgesses you are" (MS. Records, Corporation of
Christchurch, 20th September 1693, etc.). There seems originally to have been
only "a Portreeve or Prepositus, of late time," it was said in 1670, "for
better credit called a Mayor," but merely the "sworn servant" of the Lord
(MS. Acts of Privy Council, 9th November 1670). In the eighteenth century
we find the Company of Burgesses nominating three of their number for Mayor,
of whom the "Commonalty" or resident householders chose one (see the full
description in MS. Minutes, Christchurch, 19th November 1805 ; and First
Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. ii.
p. 1254).
2 MS. Minutes, Christchurch Corporation, 25th January 1641.
3 At Lymington the Corporation exacted a licence fee (in 1563 and 1699)
from any person who should " drag for oysters upon the haven " (MS. Minutes,
Lymington Corporation, 1699) ; and from 1711 onwards this fishery was let on
lease, with reservation to the Corporation of power " to set a moderate price for
all such oysters" (ibid. 3rd December 1711).
i8o THE MANORIAL BOROUGH
further declined, existing thenceforth only for the election of
members of Parliament, the periodical leasing of the remnant
of their property and their dues, and the expenditure of the
proceeds on an annual " Mayor's Breakfast " or other festivity, 1
latterly paid for by the " patron " of the Parliamentary seat. 2
At the very top of our series of Manorial Boroughs we
place the little rural township of Godmanchester in Hunting-
donshire, for many centuries completely enfranchised from
seignorial influence, fortified by successive Eoyal Charters,
occasionally enjoying a Commission of the Peace of its own,
and only falling short of the full status of a Municipal
Corporation in never actually acquiring the power of creating
its own Corporate Magistracy. 8 Yet, looked at from another
1 History of Lymington, by David Garrow, 1825, p. 48.
2 First Report of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol.
ii. p. 1255.
Chipping Campden, in North Gloucestershire once an important wool-
stapling centre received a Royal Charter in 1604, confirming a then existing
prescriptive Corporation of the Bailiffs and Burgesses. This Corporation con-
sisted of a Common Council, made up of fourteen Capital Burgesses (two of them
serving as Bailiffs) and twelve Inferior Burgesses. The Capital Burgesses were
alone eligible for election as Bailiffs, and it was they alone who elected the
Bailiffs, and filled vacancies among the Capital and Inferior Burgesses alike.
But there was also a body of Freemen, recruited by Birth and Apprenticeship,
and the payment of half a crown as fee. In ancient times the privilege of
trading or pursuing any craft had been confined to the Freemen, and in 1780
and 1794 the Common Council vainly strove to enforce this monopoly. There
was a Court of Record, held every four weeks, at which civil actions up to
6 : 13 : 4 had once been tried, but which had come by 1689 to be merely a
name for the periodical meetings of the Bailiffs and Burgesses. The town was
by this time in slow but continuous decay ; the revenues of the Corporation
gradually sank to next to nothing ; and it came more and more under the
influence of the chief local landowner, the Earl of Gainsborough, who was always
appointed High Steward. Undiscovered by the Municipal Corporation Com-
missioners in 1835, it lingered on, with population dwindling to under 2000, until
1886, when it was finally dissolved under the Municipal Corporations Act of
1883 (46 and 47 Viet. c. 18), and its little property vested by scheme of the
Charity Commissioners in 1889. See MS. Minutes, Chipping Campden
Corporation and Town Trust and also those of Vestry ; Report of Municipal
Corporation Commission, 1880, part i. pp. 23-24; "The Manor and
Borough of Chipping Campden," by Rev. S. E. Bartleet, in Transactions of the
Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, vol. ix., 1884, pp. 134-195 ;
Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire, by R. Atkyns, 1768, pp. 161-
168 ; New History of Gloucestershire, by S. Rudder, 1779, pp. 319-324 and
Appendix.
3 Our chief sources of information as to Godmanchester have been the elaborate
MS. Archives (" Stock Book," "Book of Entries," and " Court Book ") of the Cor-
poration from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries ; see also First Report
of Municipal Corporation Commission, 1835, Appendix, vol. iv. p. 2235 ; and
History of Godmanchester, by Robert Fox, 1831.
THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH 181
standpoint, the Parish and Borough of Godmanchester is only
one step removed from the Chartered Township, such as we
have seen in Beccles and Wisbech, or from such Lordless
Courts as Cartmel and Newbiggin-by-the-Sea ; full, indeed, of
survivals from the still more rudimentary Village Meeting or
Court of the Manor of the primitive agricultural community.
It does not fall within the plan of this work to trace the
rise of Godmanchester from its position as a Manor in Ancient
Demesne, nor to describe how its residents got from King John,
in return for the substantial fee-farm rent of 120 a year, a
grant of the Manor itself, with all its profits and prerogatives.
Confirmed by various subsequent Royal Charters and Letters
Patent, the "men of Godmanchester" maintained their
privileges and immunities until, by Charter of 1604, they
were ex 
