Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
And meanwhile the twelve shall view the land (or
tenements [including meadows, pastures, woods, wastes, and rights of
common] 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.
Removable to the Royal Court from the county courts were issues
of a lord's claim to a person as his villein, 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. As of 1187, pleas concerning amounts of money less than 40s.
were not heard by the Royal Court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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