Willis: Anglo-American Law 
77 
he was seized during coverture, unless he provided for her 
by jointure. Magna Charta repeated this rule. Curtesy, the 
life estate of the husband in all the estates of inheritance of 
the wife of which she was seized during coverture when there 
was issue capable of inheriting, was also established by the 
time of Henry III, which was also the time of Bracton. 
Contracts. The contracts recognized in this period were the 
promise under seal and the deliver-promise and surety-promise. 
Criminal Law. William the Conquerer allowed the Anglo- 
Saxon theory of the king’s peace to remain, and shortly after 
his coronation extended it so as to put the whole country 
under the Pax Regis. It then became an offense against the 
Crown for anyone to commit an act of violence within the 
realm. The Norman lawyers also altered very much the simple 
law of treason of Alfred, by developing the idea of the feudal 
tie between lord and vassal, so that they were inclined to treat 
all offenses personally distasteful to the king, as overlord, as 
treason. Thus about the time of Henry II it was treason to 
kill the king’s deer. The law of homicide, rape, assault, robbery, 
and theft became practically the same as in the law of Eng- 
land today. The church borrowed the inquest from the Frank- 
ish kings. It got jurisdiction over crimes thru supplanting 
vengeance by sanctuary, which developed into benefit of clergy. 
The king got jurisdiction thru the gradual extension of the 
idea of the king’s peace. 
The distinction between crime and tort began as early as 
Glanville. A crime was a breach of the king’s peace, a disturb- 
ance of the order of good government, prosecuted by the 
Crown, tho at the instance of a private accuser, and hence 
criminal cases were called pleas of the Crown. A tort was a 
wrong committed against an individual; the same act might 
be a crime but not necessarily so. If it was, it had to be tried 
separately, and the criminal penalty was quite distinct from 
the compensation paid the sufferer. The final separation of 
tort and crime came in the reign of Henry III, when the writ 
of trespass was invented. Breaches of contract were also 
recognized as separate legal wrongs. 
Remedies. That part of the Archaic Period covered by the 
reigns of the Normans and the first Plantagenets not only en- 
larged the antecedent rights above described, but also gave 
some new remedial rights. These may be classified, like the 
