There were local courts of the vill, borough, manor, hundred, county, sheriff, escheator, and royal bailiff, with overlapping jurisdictions. The most common plea in the hundred court was trespass. It also heard issues concerning services arising out of land, detention of chattels, small debts, maiming of animals, and personal assaults and brawls not amounting to felony. Twice a year the sheriff visited each hundred in the shire to hold a tourn or court for small criminal cases. Everyone who held freehold land in the hundred except the greater magnates had to attend or be fined for absence. The sheriff annually viewed frankpledge, in which every layman without land that could be forfeited for felony, including villeins, were checked for being in a tithing, a group of neighbors responsible for each other's good conduct. This applied to every boy who had reached the age of twelve. He had to swear on the Bible "I will be a lawful man and bear loyalty to our lord the king and his heirs, and I will be justicable to my chief tithing man, so help me God and the saints." Each tithing man paid a penny to the sheriff. In the manor courts, actions of debt, detinue, and covenant were frequent. Sometimes there are questions of a breach of warranty of title in agreements of sale of land. Accusations of defamation were frequent; this offense could not be taken to the King's court, but it had been recognized as an offense in the Anglo-Saxon laws. In some cases, the damages caused are specifically stated. For instance, defamation of a lord's grain cause other purchasers to forbear buying it. There are frequent cases of ordinary thefts, trespasses, and assaults. The courts did rough but substantial justice without distinction between concepts such as tort and contract. In fact, the action of covenant was the only form of agreement enforceable at common law. It required a writing under seal and awarded damages. Their law was not technical, but elastic, and remedies could include injunctions, salary attachment, and performance of acts. The precedent for punishment for treason was established by the conviction of a knight, David ab Gruffydd, who had turned traitor to the Welsh enemy during the conquest of Wales and plotted to kill the King. He was condemned to be dragged at the heels of horses for being a traitor to his knightly vows, hanged by the neck for his murders, cut down before consciousness left him to have his entrails cut out for committing his crimes during the holy week of Easter, and his head cut off and his body divided into four parts for plotting against the King's life. The head and body sections were placed in public view at various locations in the nation. Prior to this the penalty was imprisonment usually followed by ransom.