Seignorial Powers. 71 



A gradual decrease of seignorial powers and a larger increase 

 in proprietary rights are shown to have taken place in the 

 former instance by the institution of royal courts, like the 

 Scyremote and Hundred, of royal officials, like the King's 

 Reve,^ of the royal prerogative, like the subject's right of 

 appeal from the decision even of Scyremote,^ and in the latter 

 by the increased rights of individual ownership to the waste 

 and common field. 



Eventually it was only in the Courts of King's Thanes and 

 in the Halmotes of a few franchises that seignorial rights over 

 life and death survived. 



Where cases occur of fresh grants to individuals of soc and 

 sac, as late as the reign of Edward the Confessor, they were 

 probably owing to the creation of new manors by the conver- 

 sion of Folcland into Bocland, which necessitated a fresh grant 

 of judiciary powers, at first not so much connected with the 

 grantee's peculiar tenure of land as with the grantor's selection 

 of some fitting candidate to perform these solemn duties in a 

 newly populated district. Whenever the selection fell (and 

 when did it not ?) upon the owner of large landed estates, he 

 was no doubt allowed, for convenience sake, to absorb the fresh 

 judicial business into the other work of his seignorial court, 

 so that both would be held in the same room of the lord's 

 house. 



The largest portion of these mixed seignorial and public 

 tribunals was found to be, at the close of the Anglo-Saxon 

 era, in ecclesiastical hands,^ and it may be inferred from this 

 fact that the clergy had been less liable than the laity to for- 

 feit such right by arbitrary acts of injustice. 



It seems, therefore, not at all improbable that the presidency 

 of more than one Court was often invested in the same per- 

 sonage.^ The president, for example, of the Leet might also 

 be president of his Seignorial Court. Very likely, as Bishop 

 Stubbs suggests, there were two officers, one the convener, the 



* Henee the term reveland for allodial territory. 

 ^ Stubbs, Constit. Hist., p. 129. 



^ Id. Ibid.., ch. V. 



* Coote thinks that the jurisdiction granted to landowners was to relieve 

 the pressure of business in Scyremote. 



