Feudalism. 1 39 



norial court might be more arbitrary, but lie was certainly 

 less venal than the king's representative of justice. He 

 seldom cared to keep his prisoners long under lock and key, 

 but preferred to inflict a less troublesome if more summary 

 form of punishment on those who had offended him. In the 

 royal courts, on the other hand, delay between committal to 

 prison and sentence was constantly occurring either through 

 the royal negligence to execute the writ of assize, or the 

 judge's attempts to extort bribes from prisoners in exchange 

 for their liberty. It is not improbable that to these circum- 

 stances may be attributed the first appearance in England of 

 gaol fever. If so, there was a grim justice in its invasion of 

 the very judgment seat, and the retribution it wreaked there 

 on the executioner of its humbler victims. Those sprigs of 

 rue, rosemary, and other garden herbs, which to this day be- 

 strew the judge's desk in some assize towns,^ are thus not only 

 picturesque survivals of an interesting past, but significant 

 reminders of a supreme justice which overrules the very 

 judgment-seat. 



It is not without a purpose that we have given preference 

 in this chapter on feudal land tenure to the jurisdictory 

 tribunals of the country. The Norman baron was presented 

 by his royal master with the necessary machinery of magis- 

 terial government over certain manors. Save in the case of his 

 demesne lands it was not for many centuries to come that he 

 could be said to have established full proprietary rights over 

 the whole territory compassed by the royal grant. What re- 

 muneration he gave his king in return for the gift, and 

 what remuneration he obtained out of it for himself, involves 

 an explanation of the whole feudal system. 



And in the first place we may note that the form which this 

 remuneration took is corroborative of the assertion with which 

 we commenced this chapter. If the Conqueror had claimed 

 and redistributed the ownership of the land, that annual 

 assembly would have taken the form of a colossal National 

 rent audit. What he had redistributed were the seignorial 

 rights over the land, and therefore what he demanded at Salis- 

 ^ Liverpool, for example. 



