186 EARLY CONSTITUTION A J, HISTORY. 



others, were reduced to the rank of great territorial magnates, 

 enjoying certain dues from their old vicomtes, it is true, but 

 receiving them from the ducal officials, who were responsible 

 for the administration of their districts to the Duke 

 alone. (1) As the power of the Duke increased owing to the 

 administrative changes introduced by Henry I. (1) by the 

 institution of the Court of the Exchequer, and by Henry II., 

 of trial by sworn inquisition of neighbours, as an alternative 

 to the old judgments by battle or ordeal, and by the institu- 

 tion of Itinerant Justices, who travelled all over the duchy at 

 fixed periods, to judge all the cases reserved for the King's 

 judgment, and to supervise the administration of the local 

 courts of the bailiffs and vicomtes, the powers of the latter 

 were greatly restricted and they became, as we find them in 

 the " Tres Ancien Coutumier," of 1199-1200, minor officials 

 whose local courts possessed only a restricted jurisdiction. 



Let us now see what traces of this system of administra- 

 tion we can find in Guernsey under Henry II. and his 

 successors before the loss of Normandy. Our new charter of 

 1179 provides us with the key to many puzzles. It 

 proves the existence of a Royal Court in Guernsey 

 at that date, a curia regis presided over by a vicomte. 

 Guernsey was therefore a vicomte at the end of the 12th 

 century. As to the composition of the Court we have no 

 information ; neither, unfortunately, have we any Norman 

 documents to help us, but it is thought by Chesnel and others 

 that the Vicomte's Court was a feudal court, in which the 

 tenants-in-chief, the notables of the district, sat as assessors 

 under the presidency of the vicomte (2) as they sat in the 

 courts of the Anglo-Norman Sheriffs of the period. One is 

 tempted to see in the names of some the witnesses of Peter 

 Vivier's charter, Oliver de Barneville, Espiart Legat and 

 Robert Malmarchie, at least, the tenants-in-chief of the fiefs 

 of Jerbourg (now Sausmarez, St. Martin's), Legat (a portion 

 of which is now Bruniaux de Nermont), and Mauxmarquis, 

 which still owe suit of Court at our Court of Chief Pleas. 

 The jurisdiction of our Guernsey Vicomte's Court we cannot 

 suppose to have been greater than that of the other vicomtes 

 in Normandy. The court of the vicomte at the end of the 

 12th century was a court of minor instance, and the pleas of 

 the sword lay outside his farm M and were reserved for the 



(1) Powicke. Loss of Normandy, 66, 67, 71, 72, 80. Cf. Chesnel. Le Cotentin 

 and L'Avranchin 136. 



(2) Chesnel. Le Cotentin and L'Avranchin, p. 143. 



(3) Powicke. Loss of Normandy, p, 118. Haskin, Norman Institutions, 

 p. 186, Note 171. Valin, Le Due de Normandie et sa Cour, 99, 100. 



