Feudalism, 135 



tions had gone. Afterwards, in Tudor and Stuart days, no 

 confusion could possibly have occurred, although the seig- 

 norial courts had become subdivided, and much of the more 

 serious public business had been relegated to the assize courts 

 and justices of the peace. Thus, in the court baron of later 

 times, the steward presided as vicegerent of his master, the lord 

 of the manor, and inflicted fines not exceeding forty shillings 

 for trespasses, debts, and injuries. When, however, the same 

 person presided as steward of the leet, his judicial mantle fell 

 upon the shoulders of the suitors, nor could they do more than 

 give a verdict, and thus enable the steward to certify for 

 punishment to the Justices of the assize.^ Not even a stranger 

 could confuse the two assemblies, which were held at different 

 dates, and not similarly constituted. Everybody knew that 

 the court leet was a public tribunal, owing its inception to 

 the Saxon sheriff's Tourn, and that the court baron was a 

 private assembly, owing its inception to the Saxon's Halmote. 

 In the earlier times now occupying our attention, there was 

 alread}^ a code of unwritten laws which regulated the business 

 of these seignorial tribunals. The steward, even as president 

 of the court baron, much more as president of the court leet, 

 did not administer justice according to his own views of right 

 and wrong, but was guided by certain rules and precedents, 

 which found their way into print not long after the introduc- 

 tion of the printing press into Europe. By the beginning of 

 the sixteenth century some half-dozen treatises appeared 

 which, in the words of Professor Maitland, were intended " to 

 teach stewards how to preside, clerks how to enrol, and 

 pleaders how to count and defend." These productions, how- 

 ever, were mostly plagiarisms of a set of still earlier records, 

 in the shape of certain thirteenth and fourteenth century 

 manuscripts,^ which have been recently translated for the 

 Selden Society by Professor Maitland and Mr. Baildon, and 

 from which we now extract some information about the busi- 

 ness of a thirteenth-century seignorial court. 



Let us suppose that " Sir Steward " has already settled liim- 



^ Jacobs, Compleat Court Kcopcr. 



" The Court Baron, jmsshn, Selden Societ}-, 1891. 



