"The lord's remedy for a _fugitive villein_ was either by seizure or by suing out a writ of _Nativo Habendo_, or Neifty, as it is sometimes called. If the lord seized, the villein's most effectual mode of recovering liberty was by the writ of _Homine Replegiando_, which had great advantage over the writ of _Habeas Corpus_. In the _Habeas Corpus_ the return cannot be contested by pleading against the truth of it, and consequently on a _Habeas Corpus the question of liberty cannot go to a jury for trial_.... But in the _Homine Replegiando_ it was otherwise.... The plaintiff, ... on the defendant's pleading the villenage, had the same opportunity of contesting it as when impleaded by the lord in a _Nativo Habendo_. If the lord sued out a _Nativo Habendo_, and the villenage was denied, in which case the sheriff could not seize the villein, _the lord was then to enter his plaint in the county court_; and as the sheriff was not allowed to try the question of villenage in his court, the lord could not have any benefit from the writ, without removing the cause by the writ of _Pone_ into the King's Bench or Common Pleas."[177] [176] Argument in Sommersett's Case: Howell's State Trials, XX. 42. [177] Ibid., 38, 39, note. The authority of Mr. Hargrave is sufficient. But I mean to place this matter beyond all cavil. From the Digest of Lord Chief Baron Comyns, which at the adoption of the Constitution was among the classics of our jurisprudence, I derive another description of the remedy. "If the lord claims an inheritance in his villein, _who flies from his lord against his will_, and lives in a place out of the manor to which he is regardant, the lord shall have a _Nativo Habendo_. And upon such writ, directed to the sheriff, he may seize him who does not deny himself to be a villein. But if the defendant say that he is a freeman, the sheriff cannot seize him, but the lord must remove the writ by _Pone_ before the Justices in Eyre, or in C.B., _where he must count upon it_."[178] An early writer of peculiar authority, Fitzherbert, in his _Natura Brevium_, on the writs of the Common Law, thus describes these proceedings. [178] Comyns's Digest: Remedy for a Villein, (C. 1,) _Nativo Habendo_.