The characteristic mixture of different elements which we notice in the criminal jurisdiction of the manorial court may be seen also if we examine its civil jurisdiction. We find the halimot treating in its humble region all the questions of law which may be debated in the courts of common law. Seisin, inheritance, dower, leases, and the like are discussed, and the pleading, though subject to the custom of the manor, takes very much the shape of the contentions before the royal judges. Now this civil litigation is interesting from two points of view: it involves statements of law and decisions as to the relative value of claims. In both respects the parties have to refer to the body of the court, to its assessors or suitors. The influence of the 'country' on the judgment goes further here than in the Common Law Courts, because there is no independent common law to go by, and the custom of the manor has generally to be made out by the manorial tenants themselves. And so a party 'puts himself on his country,' not only in order to decide some issue of fact, but also in regard to points of customary law. Inquisitions are made and juries formed quite as much to establish the jurisprudence of the court as to decide who has the better claim under the said jurisprudence. Theoretically it is the full court which is appealed to, but in ordinary cases the decision rests with a jury of twelve, or even of six. The authority of such a verdict goes back however to the supposed juridical sense or juridical knowledge of the court as a body. Now it cannot be contested that such an organisation of justice places all the weight of the decision with the body of the suitors as assessors. The presiding officer and the lord whom he represents have not much to do in the course of the deliberation. If we may take up the comparison which Mr. Maitland has drawn with German procedure[812], we shall say that the 'Urtheilfinder' have all the best of it in the trial as against the 'Richter.' This 'Richter' is seemingly left with the duties of a chairman, and the formal right to draw up and pronounce a decision which is materially dependent on the ruling of the court. But a special reserve of equity is left with the lord, and in consequence of its operation we find some decisions and sentences altered, or their execution postponed[813]. I have to endorse one more point of Mr. Mainland's exposition, namely, his view of the presentment system as of a gradual modification of the original standing of the manorial suitors as true assessors of the court. Through the influence of the procedure of royal courts, on the one hand, of the stringent classifications of the tenantry in regard to status on the other, the presenters were gradually debased, and legal learning came to maintain that the only judge of a customary court was its steward. But a presentment of the kind described in the manorial rolls vouches for a very independent position of the suitors, and indeed