Manorial court

“ Might we not start from the original similarity between ancient demesne and ordinary manors, and thus explain how the rule as to the necessary constitution of the manorial court was formed? It seems to me a mere application of the higher rule that a court over free people must contain free people, to a state of things where the distinction between free and unfree was not drawn at the same level as in the feudal epoch, but was drawn at a lower point. ”

“ It is so easy to be intimidated by the fear of aggravating your misfortunes. When an agent frightens some tenants by telling them the unfavourable decision of the Court of Chancery as to the tenant right of the copyholders on a neighbouring estate, do they answer, as they should, that manorial customs vary, and that they will see what the Courts say about their own? ”

“ It is indispensable to the argument, to maintain that the mere act of survey does, of itself, in point of law, show an intention inconsistent with the continuance of any conditional estate, within the limits of the manor. This the plaintiffs in error have endeavoured to maintain; and for this purpose have contended, that a new title, which they call the 'manorial title,' and which they say is distinct from the proprietary title, was created by the survey: that the plaintiffs in error hold under the proprietary title; the plaintiffs in ejectment, under the manorial title. ”

“ On the earlier rolls such entries are comparatively few, the object of recording the proceedings of the courts not being to afford the villein written evidence of his title to the land he occupied, but to serve as a check on the manorial officers, and show what the amercements, fines, and profits of the manor were. [41] As time goes on we find these entries increasing in number and importance, a tenant pays a small fine to be allowed to search the rolls for evidence of his title, later he calls the rolls to ‘warrant’ it, and temp. ”

“ Such an arrangement exists in every place; it is regulated by custom and by the decisions of the manorial court or halimote, it extends equally over the free and over the unfree land, over the waste, the moor and wood, and over269 the fallow; it admits a certain number and certain kinds of beasts, and excludes others. Only because such a general arrangement is supposed to exist, is the right to common treated in so vague a manner; the documents present, in truth, only a reference to relations which are substantiated in the husbandry system of the manor. ”

“ Holders of land under the lord of the manor came before the court to claim their tenements and land as the rightful heirs of tenants deceased, to pay their heriots or fines due to the lord on every entry of a new holder. At this assembly, too, matters of police, the infringement of local customs, and often disputes between the tenants themselves, were disposed of by the officials of the manor. The record of the business of such courts is known as the Court roll, and these documents give some information about the extent of the mortality among the manorial tenants. ”

“ On large tracts of land these villages would form separate open field groups. Although the economic evidence is not within our reach in early times, we have indications of separate village meetings under the manorial court even from the legal point of view taken by the court-rolls. ”

“ The court, as the upholder of manorial custom, was occupied with discovering and checking breaches of it. On manors where there was not sufficient grazing land to allow of each tenant pasturing as many beasts as he pleased, it fixed “the stint" which each was allowed to turn out on the common. It decided whether rights of pasture were confined to old tenements or whether they could be extended to cottages recently erected. It made rules as to what fields should be sown with what crops. It would fine a man “for refusing to consult his neighbours touching the common affairs of the township.” ”

“ Through the influence of the procedure of royal courts, on the one hand, of the stringent classifications of the tenantry in regard to status on the other, the presenters were gradually debased, and legal learning came to maintain that the only judge of a customary court was its steward. But a presentment of the kind described in the manorial rolls vouches for a very independent position of the suitors, and indeed for their prevalent authority in the constitution of the tribunal. ”

“ The Court Leet meeting of the manor of Dudley, being dependent upon the manorial rights of the barony of Ward, becomes by such ancient right a self-constituted body of that barony, hence the perfect right of Lord Ward to invite whom he may please to attend his Court Leet. ”

“ A proceeding having been instituted in the Court of Common Pleas for the recovery of certain manorial rights in the county of Kent, the defendant offered to prove by single combat his right to retain possession. The plaintiff accepted the challenge, and the Court having no power to stay the proceedings, agreed to the champions who were to fight in lieu of the principals. The Queen commanded the parties to compromise ”

“ The pleadings of our several courts, with the judgments thereon, have been for many centuries entered on rolls. The greater part of these are termed Placita, or pleading Rolls. Their important bearing on manorial history is obvious. There is scarcely a manor in the kingdom that had not occasion, on an average of at least once a century, to put in an appearance in one or other of the courts on some matter involving litigation. ”

“ Nor do they appear to have been less attentive to the moral condition of their town, than to their manorial rights. The presentments at the Courts Leet bear constant testimony to the desire of promoting, as far as possible, good order and good manners. ”

“ There are, therefore, many reasons for maintaining the permanence in Britain of the villa organisation; and we have seen above that while there are no clear traces of the free community, there are traces of what is afterwards called the manor, within a couple of centuries after the English conquest. These two lines of argument converge toward the conclusion that [Pg xxxi] the manorial system dates in the main from the period of Roman rule. ”

“ If every adverse suit could be taken into the Federal courts, obviously in some of the larger western states the litigation would not be 'before some judicial tribunal located in the neighborhood where the property is,' for in them the Federal courts are often held only in the capital or chief city of the state and at a great distance from certain parts of the mining regions therein. ”

“ It was an action of trespass, to try the title to a tract of land. On the trial, the defendant relied on the 15th section of the statute of limitations, passed in 1841, by the congress of the then Republic of Texas, which is in the following words: 'Every suit to be instituted to recover real estate, as against him, her, or them, in possession, under title or color of title, shall be instituted within three years next after cause of action shall have accrued, and not afterwards, saving,' &c. ”

“ When the United States acquires title to lands, which are purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state within which they are situated 'for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, Dock-yards, and other needful Buildings' (Const. art. I, § 8) , the Federal jurisdiction is exclusive of all State authority. With reference to land otherwise acquired, this court said in Fort Leavenworth Railroad Co. ”

“ Standing timber is a part of the realty, and goes with its title or right of possession. When severed from the soil, its character as realty is changed; it has become personalty, but the title to it continues as before. The right, therefore, to recover for what is severed from the freehold depends upon the right to the freehold itself. If the plaintiff is in possession, he is presumed to be lawfully so, having the right of possession, and therefore entitled to what is severed. If he is out of possession, he must show a title to the land, or right to its possession. ”

“ The only possible ground upon which the judgment below can be sustained consistently with the law of the land is to hold that no court of any state had jurisdiction in the year 1867, even with the parties before it, to inquire, in an action of trespass, whether an alleged taking of the private property of a citizen was a mere trespass, or was an act of war upon the part of the defendant, a Confederate soldier, and to give judgment according to the result of that inquiry. ”

“ It was assumed by French feudal law that in all cases when land was granted by a seigneur in subinfeudation the recipients would be bound to appear as members of a court of tenants for the settlement of conflicts in regard to land. A third source may be traced in the extension of the patrimonial justice of a person over his serfs and personal dependents to the classes of free and half-free population connected with the seigneurie in one way or another. There arose in consequence of these assumptions of jurisdiction a most bewildering confusion of tribunals and judicial rights. ”

“ When the defendants have proved that the land in controversy either belonged to the 'Grand Prairie Common Field of Saint Louis,' or that the lots in dispute had been inhabited, cultivated, or possessed prior to 1803, it would be a very harsh rule to require one who claims to have purchased the title arising from such occupation, cultivation, or possession to prove with certainty and precision the time when and the person who cultivated or occupied that precise property 80 or 90 years ago. Those who could testify from actual knowledge are, perhaps, all dead. ”

“ It would seem to have become the law that to the existence of the manor two courts were necessary—a court customary for customary tenants, and a court baron for free tenants. In the court customary the lord’s steward is the judge; in the court baron the freeholders are the judges. If the freeholders in the manor diminish to less than two in number the court baron cannot be held, and the manor perishes. ”

“ By statute, no one, including the lord of a manor, may take land from anyone else, for instance, by the customary process of distress, without a judgment from the Royal Court. This did not apply to London, where a landlord leasing or renting land could take distress in his fee.
No one, including the lord of a manor, shall deprive an heir of the land possessed by his father, i.e. his birthright.
A tenant may marry off a daughter unless his lord shows some just cause for refusing to consent to the marriage. ”

“ Clearly in these circumstances a rigid classification of holdings by the manorial authorities is quite compatible with a great deal of diversity in the arrangements made with each other by the holders, and we are likely to miss a good many innovations if we look at the manor only through the eyes of officials and as a revenue-producing concern. ”

“ In 1885 the defendant applied at the local land office to make a homestead entry of the tract, and the application was denied, the circumstances being such that it could not be allowed. In 1888, while the selection of 1883 was pending, he settled upon the tract with the purpose of acquiring the title by compliance with the homestead law, and continuously thereafter resided upon the tract, occupied, improved, and cultivated it, all the time asserting a claim under that law. ”

“ For these reasons-that the heirs never had any other right or title to the lands, or to their possession, except under the lease, containint covenants to restore the property and possession to the lessor, or to his successor in title, on its termination-the plaintiff prays that they be adjudged to hold the lands as trustees for his use and benefit, and be decreed to couvey them to him, on his paying the money advanced in the purchase, and that he be allowed reasonable rent for the occupancy of the lands. ”

“ Immediately under the western abrupt and high bank, and within the latitude of the north and south boundary-line of plaintiff's land, those lines being drawn down to the water's edge, and in the bed of the river, as above described, east of the western abrupt and high bank, the plaintiff erected a mill previous to 1842, and continued in the possession and use of it until overflowed by defendant's dam. ”

“ The provision following the authorization to acquire the land, 'and thereon to erect and build a court house and prison,' was no more than a direction to the trustees as to the mode of use to be made of the land after it had been purchased. ”

“ It is often said that the right was given, or confirmed, to the inhabitants in consideration of the burden of supporting the deer for the pleasure of the king or of the owner of the chase. It seems more probable that the forest law prevented the growth of the manorial system, and with it those rules which have tended to restrict the class of persons entitled to enjoy the waste lands of the district. ”

“ XVII. Every manor shall consist of not less than three thousand acres, and not above twelve thousand aces, in one entire piece and colony; but any three thousand acres or more in one piece, and the possession of one man, shall not be a manor unless it be constituted a manor by the grant of the Palatine's court. ”

“ Every LORD or LADY possessing a manor within any part of the kingdom, has the power of appointing a person, under the denomination of a GAME-keeper, to protect, preserve, or KILL any kind of GAME upon the particular MANOR for which he is appointed; and to execute and enforce all such other manorial rights and privileges within the department, as may be submitted to his {38} delegation ”