Distinctions, however, did come to be drawn, and this by reason of a force the operation of which had escaped the notice of enquirers who had not been trained to attend to legal phenomena--by the force of legal procedure. "New modes of procedure are emphasising distinctions which have heretofore been less felt. The freehold suitors can maintain their position[19], the customary suitors become mere presenters and jurymen with the lord's steward as their judge. Every extension of royal justice at the expense of feudal does some immediate harm to the villein. It is just because all other people can sue for their lands and their goods in the King's own Court that he seems so utterly defenceless against the lord: 'the custom of the manor' looks so like 'the will of the lord' just because the humblest freeholder has something much better than the custom of the manor to rely upon, for he has the assizes of our lord the King, the Statutes of King and Parliament." The third volume edited by Maitland for the Selden Society consisted of two parts--a collection of Precedences for use in seignorial and other local courts belonging to the thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth century, and Select Pleas from the Bishop of Ely's Court at Littleport. Here there was less matter for elaborate historical disquisition, for the main problem with regard to the first class of document was to settle the age of the manuscripts; but the brief introduction to the Littleport pleas contained an important suggestion with regard to the early history of the English law of Contract. Were not the local courts enforcing "formless" arguments long before the King's Court had developed the action of "assumpsit" for the enforcement of agreements not under seal? The reader is reminded that the King's Court never by any formal act or declaration took upon itself to enforce the whole law of the land, that only by degrees did its "catalogue of the forms of action become the one standard of English law." There was an action for defamation in the local courts long before the Kings Court had undertaken to punish the slanderer; and what was true of defamation might equally be true of "parol" agreements. The Bishop's Court at Littleport was certainly enforcing agreements and it was difficult to suppose that the villeins of Littleport put their contracts into writing. Here again a few slight indications had prompted a secure and far-reaching inference.