It is well known that later law recognises three kinds of seignorial courts: the Leet, the Court Baron, and the Customary Court. The first has to keep the peace of the King, the others are concerned with purely manorial affairs. The Leet appears in possession of a police and criminal jurisdiction in so far as that has not been appropriated by the King's own tribunals--its parallel being the sheriff's tourn in the hundred. The Court Baron is a court of free tenants entrusted with some of the conveyancing and the petty litigation between them, and also with the exercise of minor franchises. The Customary Court has in its charge the unfree population of the manor. In keeping with this division the Court Baron consists according to later theory of a body of free suitors which is merely placed under the presidency of the steward, while in the Customary Court the steward is the true and only judge, and the copyholders, customary tenants or villains, around him are merely called up as presenters. [Court Leet.] The masterly investigations of Mr. Maitland, from which any review of the subject must start, have shown conclusively, that this latter doctrine, as embodied in Coke, for instance, draws distinctions and establishes definitions which were unknown to earlier practice. The Leet became a separate institution early enough, although its name is restricted to one province--Norfolk--even at the time of the Hundred Rolls[784]. The foundation of the court was laid by the frank-pledge system and the necessity of keeping it in working order. We find the Leet Court sometimes under the names 'Curia Visus franci plegii,' or 'Visus de borchtruning[785],' and it appears then as a more solemn form of the general meeting. It is held usually twice a year to register all the male population from twelve years upwards, to present those who have not joined the tithings, and sometimes to elect the heads or representatives of these divisions--the 'Capitales plegii[786].' Sometimes the tithing coincides with the township, is formed on a territorial basis, as it were, so that we may find a village called a tithing[787]. This leads to the inference, that the grouping into tens was but an approximate one, and this view is further supported by the fact that we hear of bodies of twelve along with those of ten[788]. [View of Frank-pledge.] As to attending the meeting, a general rule was enforced to that effect, that the peasantry must attend in person and not by reason of their tenure[789]. But as it was out of the question to drive all the men of a district to the manorial centres on such days, exceptions of different kinds are frequent[790]. Besides the women and children, the personal attendants of the lord get exempted, and also shepherds, ploughboys, and men engaged in driving waggons laden with corn. Servants and aliens were considered as under the pledge of the person with whom they were staying. [Communal accusation.]