was dispatched. This consisted of all civil actions concerning their services or holdings, or disputes among themselves. The court baron-the freeholder's court-was simply the old tungemot with a new name. This court exercised jurisdiction in all civil actions and in cases of theft and other minor criminal offences. The suitors were the freeholders of the "tenemental" lands, including all undervassals or "grantees" of the lord of the manor. As in the old tungemot they made their own by-laws and were the sole judges, deciding all questions according to the custom of the particular neighborhood.3

But by far the most interesting thing connected with the manor is the court leet, literally the folkmoot. The term is generic courts leet were not only granted to lords of manors, but to monasteries, boroughs, and even villages; or, on alienation of the landed estates, the leet jurisdiction might be reserved and thus become exercised over a district with which the possessor of the leet had no other connection. But wherever found, according to the later theory of the lawyers, the leet must be regarded as an offshoot or branch of the sheriff's tourn—that is, of the shire court sitting twice a year in each hundred of the county; and as such it is held to be always the

1On court customary see Wood, Institute, 511-16; Gneist, Hist. Eng. Const. I, 169; Scroggs, Courts-Leet and Courts-Baron, 80; Maine, Village Communities, 134; Stubbs, I, 399.

2 Baron from O. H. G. bar, a man, Skeat. On the various uses of the word see Spelmann, Glossary (1626) p. 76 ff. The legal maxim is: mañ ne posit est sans court baro: Kitchin, Court Leete et Court Baron, 4.

3 On the court baron see Biener, Das Eng. Geschwornengericht, I, 50, 52; Blackstone, III, 33–4; Gneist, Hist. Eng. Const., I, 170 f., 190; Stubbs, I, 184-6, 399; Glanville XII, 6, Phillips, Eng. Reichs u. Rechtsgeschichte, II, 443 Placita cujusque curiae secundem consuetudines suas agitantur, etc. Cf. text of Phillips, II, 86 f.

4 Leet, cognate with German Leute. Gneist, II, 166; Adams, Norman Constables, 13.

5 Gneist, II, 167.

"The tourn was therefore the "great court leet," as the old hundred court was the court baron of the hundred and the county court that of the shire. Stubbs, I, 104; Scroggs, Courts-Leet and Courts-Baron, 1 ff.

creation of royal prerogative. Accordingly in case of extinction by forfeiture or otherwise the leet jurisdiction merges in the tourn. It is a manorial court; but suitors are obliged to attend not as tenants of the franchise but as subjects of the crown-suit real.1

The jurisdiction of the manorial court leet was coördinate with that of the sheriff's tourn, extending to all crimes and offences punishable by common law, except pleas of the crown, being chiefly such as by the old system could be settled by money composition; and it is curious to observe that after magna charta had declared that liberi homines should not be amerced save by the judgment of their peers, it became customary to choose two suitors as "affeerers" to assess the penalties. Grants of the right to have a court leet were eagerly sought in the Norman period, and paid for by heavy subsidies or fines. Three powerful motives for securing such grants existed escape from the jurisdiction of the sheriff or his bailiff, who was arbitrary and negligent in the performance of his duties; the desire of the local communities to have restored the right of controlling their own affairs; and the wish of both lord and people to gain a criminal jurisdiction more extended than that of the court baron. And in this last right we have a signal proof that the functions of the town

1 Gneist, II, 166 f., Hist. Eng. Const., 191-2.

There is considerable variation in the application of the nomenclature : " court of the manor" is used to comprehend the three courts as later distinguished; the curia baronum is also sometimes used to comprehend the "customary court." In a certain sense, the court leet is but an emanation of the court baron, through the tendency of legal science to differentiate and sharply define. It may therefore be regarded as originating in the ancient town and hundred moots. The theory that the leet is essentially a branch of the royal jurisdiction is a part of the tendency to make the king the source of justice. See Maine, Village Communities, 139-40. The jurisdiction of the curia baronum was also converted into a personal grant which could be refused. Gneist, Hist. Eng. Const., I, 172; Leges Hen. I, 19: Schmid, p. 446.

2 Gneist, II, 168; Scroggs, Courts-Leet and Courts-Baron, 6, 29.

ship were not curtailed by its conversion into a manor. There is in this instance an actual gain: while retaining its powers as a moot, the township has added the judicial powers of the hundred court-even those of the old county court as exercised by the sheriff in his tourn.

In the leet the steward was judge; but the verdict was rendered by a jury or rather committee of the suitors, the latter consisting of all persons between the ages of 12 and 60, residing within the precincts of the manor, except peers and clergymen. The leet jury is thus the representative of the ancient participation of the whole community in the local courts, reminding us of the twelve seignior thegns of the hundred and the shire moots. In this court the suitors chose constables, enacted by-laws, kept the roll of their own membership perfect; and the judicial procedure was identical with that of the ancient popular courts.3 Leets were held regularly but twice a year; and were therefore totally inadequate to discharge properly the functions of police or peace tribunals. Hence with the rise of justices of the peace, and the coöperation of other causes, they gradually fell into decay. But the entire manorial machinery has survived to our own times, though shorn of much of its importance, and the various courts have continued to discharge functions which demonstrate the identity of the manor with the most ancient form of local gov

5

1 Gneist, II, 167. For illustrations of the composition and procedure of the leet juries, see Lawrence, Extracts from the Court Rolls of Wimbledon.

2 Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 47-8, note. See interesting examples of by-laws and orders in Peacock, Notes from the Court Rolls of the Manor of Scotter, 377-9, 383 ff. Cf. Kitchin, Court Leete et Court Baron, 45.

3 Gneist, II, 168-9, describes the procedure. Cf. Toulmin Smith, SelfGovernment, 225; Stubbs, I, 401.

4 But according to 18 Henry III, 1234, they were to be held once in three weeks; and they had been held under Henry II twice a month. Toulmin Smith, Self-Government, 220–21.

5 Summarized by Gneist, Hist. Eng. Const., I, 173–5; cf. Ib., 190 f.

6 This is the regret of Toulmin Smith who pleads for a revival of the courts: Self-Government, 273 f.; The Parish, 23, 216, 369, etc.

ernment. "The right of the markmen to determine whether a new settler should be admitted to the township exists in the form of admitting a tenant at the court baron and customary court of every manor; the right of the markmen to determine the by-laws, the local arrangement for the common husbandry, or the fencing of the hay-fields, or the proportion of cattle to be turned into the common pasture, exists still in the manorial courts and in the meetings of the townships: the very customs of relief and surrender which are often regarded as distinctly feudal, are remnants of the polity of the time when every transfer of property required the witness of the community, to whose membership the new tenant was thereby admitted."1

V. THE PARISH.

(a).-The Ancient Parish.

In several respects the parish is the most interesting of local institutions. Every phase of its development-the growth of its territorial area; the way in which its name and organization became identical with those of the township, while it discharged at the same time separate ecclesiastical functions; its connection with the manor; the differentiated forms and the complex relations which it has developed in recent timesall this illustrates in a wonderful manner the vitality of social organisms: the persistence of the essential type in the midst of superficial change.

1Stubbs, I, 84-5.

On the court leet see also Burn, Justice (1756), 455-7; Wood, Institute (1754), 509-11; Bohn, Pol. Cyc., III, 238-45; Blackstone, IV, 273-4; Stephen, Hist. of Crim. Law, I, 82, 126 f.; Toulmin Smith, The Parish, index; Merewether and Stephens, Hist. of Boroughs, who insist on their continuity with the Saxon folkmoots: see index; Kitchin, Court Leete et Court Baron, 47-53. Gomme, Primitive Folk-Moots, 113–135, has an excellent account of the "open-air courts" of the manor.

EVOLUTION OF THE PAROCHIAL DISTRICT.

Almost from the first advent of the Roman priest in Britain began the process of building or reconsecrating local churches and the adoption of the townships or marks as districts of the officiating clergy. For a time, however, the bishops and their assistant priests led coenobitical or monastic lives; but not according to the strict rule of St. Benedict. And this was in accordance with the usual practice of the early Christian missionaries elsewhere among uncivilized or dangerous tribes. From such central stations the clerks or monks sallied forth on their "circuits" to preach and to administer the offices of religion, each in his own particular district. Such a circuit or area was called a scriftscir,' or shrift-shire, but it is not regarded as the basis of the parish. It had no organic significance for the people within its limits; but the entire territory under supervision of the clergy of the station or minster the diocese or mynster-scir2-was a unit for the collection of oblations and for the spiritual jurisdiction. The circuits were merely convenient areas designed to facilitate a division of labor among the priests of the station.3

This state of things could not long endure. With the spread of the conversion and the expansion of settlements there would gradually arise on the part of the various communities a demand for local churches and separate territorial organization. The creation of parishes in England has

1 Canute's Canons, 6, 9: Thorpe, II, 244, 246; Aethels., II, 25; Aethelr., V, 12; Canute, I, 13: Schmid, 146, 222, 262; Anhang, I, 42, p. 366. Cf. Selden, On Tithes, 252.

2 Aelfred's Baeda, V, 19, III, 19. See Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 24, note. On the whole subject of the origin and original names of the parochial districts see Pearson, Historical Maps, 55-9, who regards the parish as identical with the ancient mark and tithing.

3 On the early stations see Selden, On Tithes, 151-5; Kemble, Saxons, II, 414 ff.; Baeda, Ecc. Hist., III, 17, 26, IV, 27: Bohn ed., pp. 135, 161, 226; Bohn, Pol. Cyc., III, 451; Stubbs, I, 222.