^be Stuart lpe^o^. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



THE BUSINESS OF THE COURT LEET. 



We liave reached a period in the national history when real 

 property had gradually grown in importance, until its relative 

 value had surpassed that of the other form of national wealth 

 known as personalty. The rights of ownership had been more 

 and more jealously preserved and its wrongs more and more 

 jealously opposed ; until in fact there had grown up about the 

 possession of land a network of statutes, judges' rulings, and 

 precedents, which securely hedged in and protected it from out- 

 side interference. What has been technically termed the Law 

 of Torts had already grown to such proportions as to occupy 

 much of the time spent by steward and jury in the manor 

 hall where the Court Leet generally assembled. It is true 

 that, as compared with our modern law practice, the sum of 

 illegalities embraced by this with difficulty defined term of 

 Tort becomes dwarfed to an insignificant item in the statute 

 book of the Stuart days. There were, for example, far less 

 intricacies then in the process of distraining, in the subtle 

 distinctions between various kinds of fixtures ; in the liability 

 of one neighbour to fence in and another to fence out ; in the 

 perplexing division of repairs into tenantable and decorative ; 

 in the powers of riparian owners ; in the rights concerning air 

 and lights ; and in the numerous other subjects which crop up 

 now-a-days to set two otherwise friendly neighbours at variance. 

 But we have only to compare the business of a Court Leet 

 presided over by a Jacobean steward, with the same assembly 

 presided over by a Plantagenet seneschal, to note not only the 



