64 Histo7y of the English Landed InieTest. 



Bishop Stnbbs^ lias pointed out certain franchises or liberties 

 identical in extent with the hundreds or Wapentakes, whose 

 proprietors possessed those rights of sac and soc, toll and 

 team, which also belonged to the president of the public 

 court. The same author has suggested - that this practice of 

 sac, soc,^ etc., introduces the first idea of a jurisdiction accom- 

 panying the possession of land, and attributes to such cases 

 the original absorption of national business into the private 

 tribunal. Mr. Maitland dealing with the subject of Frank- 

 pledge and the Jury of Presentment * in their relationship to 

 the Court Leet, holds similar views. He suggests that the Jury 

 of Presentment originated long after this era in the Assize of 

 Clarendon, and became implicated with the pre-existent view 

 of Frank-pledge in the Hundred Court. He further suggests 

 that by a piece of seignorial imitation of public judicial rights 

 properly belonging to the Hundred Court, it was introduced 

 into the Private Tribunal, and that the abstraction or usur- 

 pation of these powers, together with sac, soc, toll, team, 

 and estate business formed that fortuitous concourse of atoms 

 out of which was evolved the Court Leet. "We however 

 propose to entirely reverse the process, by suggesting that 

 the original Saxon over-lord was first a judge, afterwards a 

 landowner, and that therefore the abstraction of his judicial 

 powers by the nation was just the very opposite process to 

 what Bishop Stubbs and Mr. Maitland have imagined as 

 taking place.^ 



At the time of the early Anglo-Saxon occupation of Britain 

 we are at a period too close to the transition stage from com- 



1 Const. Hist., ch. v., ed. iv., sec. 47. 



2 Id. lb. ch. vii., p. 204. 



3 For a definition of sac, soc, etc., vide Laws of Edward the Confessor, 

 xxii. Stubbs, Sel. Charters, pt. ii., p. 78. 



■• Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seignorial Courts {S6]([en Society, 

 1888). See also Appendix M. to Taswell-Langmead, Const. Jli.'it., ed. IV. 



* Mr. Henry Adams, in speaking of Edward the Confessor's sweeping 

 grants of jurisdiction to the Chui-ch, leaves open the question whether they 

 preceded or followed the silent assumption of judicial powers by private 

 hands. Vide p. 52, The Anglo-Saxon Courts of Law, in Essays on Anglo- 

 Saxon Law. 



