Business of the Court Leet. 371 



the Manor Court to that of the hundred, and fresh disputes and 

 fresh causes for legislation had increased the business of the 

 leet jury much in the same proportion as greater powers and 

 better education had increased that of the suitors in the Estate 

 Court. At length (for it would leave the historical sketch of 

 these courts incomplete were it not brought down to present 

 times) as the population of certain districts thickened into 

 town-like proportions, the corporations replaced the leet and 

 manorial courts, and charters vested in these later bodies the 

 old powers of the leet and baronial presidents. Finally the 

 Courts of Quarter and Borough Sessions separated the civil 

 from the criminal jurisdiction, and rendered the use of these 

 older assemblies as well as of their officials obsolete. The 

 constable was employed elsewhere, but the head-boroughs, 

 ale-conners, leather-searchers, and bellman disappeared for ever. 

 Still one or two boroughs and a manor here and there cling to 

 the old customs, which linger on to attract and delight the 

 American professor or colonial antiquarian, though the matter- 

 of-fact burgess may term them "tomfoolery,"^ The curious 

 visitor to Warwick on a court day may thus, if he choose, watch 

 the proceedings of the jury of presentment, and the view of 

 frank pledge submitted for the consideration of the suitors just 

 as it used to be in Saxon times, when no man could be a free- 

 man or possess a seat in the Court, unless he could obtain two 

 neighbours to act as his surety, and the court now as then meets 

 annually to examine the claims of all those who desire to be 

 entered on its lists. Thus, too, the corporation of Manchester 

 a few decades back, bought the manorial rights from the lord ; 

 and Professor Rogers- tells us (we suspect with glee) that 

 Cobden, the greatest champion of a free trade in corn, held by 

 a strange irony of fate the office of ale-taster in that ancient 

 manor, a post associated with perhaps the strongest protec- 

 tionist statute ever passed by any legislature, native or foreign, 

 modern or ancient,^ 



By the transference of the machinery of police from the 



* A fact. - Prices and Agric. 



•^ Assisa Panis et Cervisice. 



