The Business of the Court Baroji. 387 



no inducement for eitlier lord, steward, or juror to treat him 

 with leniency. 



The survival here and there, in these prosaic and bustling 

 times, of some form of an ancient court is a circumstance 

 which adds reality to their almost forgotten past. It is doubt- 

 ful, however, if the busy lawyer who generally represents his 

 employer as steward, appreciates this side of the question at 

 its full worth. We have had opportunities of discussing the 

 subject with one or two, and were disappointed to find that 

 the old distinctions between Courts Leet and Baron had 

 vanished so completely as never to have occurred to the minds 

 of their modern presidents. Nor had any of these old assem- 

 blies retained one tithe of their original importance even at 

 the period of history that we are now discossing. 



We have been at pains to collate the principal subject matter 

 of a series of presentments belonging to several manors in Lan- 

 cashire,^ and extending over the early half of the eighteenth 

 century, and have found that the most trivial topics of estate 

 management alone occupied the jurors' attention. Formidable 

 indeed is the charge of the seneschal, with its long roll of ill 

 deeds punishable by death ; but the actual business which 

 follows is such that the landlord's agent and tenantry of the 

 Victorian era would amicably settle after half an hour's discus- 

 sion in the estate office. The jury appoint their burleymen, law- 

 men, house looker, moss reeve, afieerer, and court bailiff, and the 

 Court Roll records the names of these worthy rustics as well a^ 

 lists of jurors, members of the court, watercourses ordered to 

 be cleansed, etc. After that we read of Lawrence Worthing- 

 ton being ordered to cut a ditch through a neighbour's tene- 

 ment, of James Dewhurst compelled to erect a fence, and of 

 some one else having to repair a house. Then certain edicts 

 of the homage are enrolled with the object of protecting 

 vested manorial interests. For this reason we find that no 

 one is to pasture or put any goods on the manorial moss 

 between May and 25th July ; that in order to prevent the 

 immigration of any tenants or poor people, no member of the 



^ Thornley, Weston and Chipping, belonging to the Earl of Derby. 



