Our Legal Heritage, King AEthelbert, 596 to King George III, 1775Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage, King AEthelbert, 596 to King George III, 1775
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
meanwhile the twelve shall view the land (or tenements from which
the services are demanded). And summon by good summoners N., who
is tenant, to be there to hear the recognition. Witness..." The
claimant could object to any of the twelve knights for just cause
as determined by the court. Each of the twelve gave an oath as to
whether the plaintiff's or the defendant's position was correct.
This oath was not to speak falsehood nor conceal truth according
to knowledge gained by eyewitness or "by the words of their
fathers and by such words as they are bound to have such
confidence in as if they were their own". If any did not know the
truth of the matter, others were found until twelve agreed [the
recognitors] on which party had the greater right. Perjury was
punished by forfeiture of all one's goods and chattels to the king
and at least one year's imprisonment. If the tenant in court
vouched another to warranty, such as the lord to whom he paid
homage, that warrantor would stand in his place in the
proceedings. If the warrantor lost, he would have to give to his
vassal equivalent land in exchange. Burgage tenure was not usually
decided by assize. Also, if the parties were relatives, neither
the assize nor the combat was available to them, but the matter
had to be decided by the law of inheritance.
Itinerant justices could conduct these assizes: petty and grand.
In 1198, the hundred is empowered to act on all the business of
the session, including all recognitions and petty assizes ordered
by the king's writ, where the property in dispute was worth no
more than 200s. [ten pounds] a year. The four knights came to be
selected by the suitors of the county court rather than by the
sheriff.
This assize procedure extended in time to all other types of civil
actions.
Also removable to the Royal Court from the county courts were
issues of a lord's claim to a person as his villein (combat not
available), service or relief due to a lord, dower rights, a
creditor's refusal to restore a gage [something given as security]
to a debtor who offered payment or a deposit, money due to a
lender, a seller, or a person to whom one had an obligation under
a charter, fish or harvest or cattle taken from lands unjustly
occupied, cattle taken from pasture, rights to enjoy a common, to
stop troubling someone's transport, to make restitution of land
wrongfully occupied, to make a lord's bailiff account to him for
the profits of the manor.
The Royal Court also decided disputes regarding baronies, nuisance
or encroachments on royal land or public ways or public waterways,
such as diverting waters from their right course and issues of
nuisance by the making or destroying of a ditch or the destruction
of a pond by a mill to the injury of a person's freehold. Other
pleas of the Crown were: insult to the royal dignity, treason,
breaches of safe-conducts, and injury to the King's servants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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