We have seen that it would be impossible to maintain that originally the steward was the only judge of the manorial tribunal; the whole court with its free and unfree suitors participates materially in the administration of justice, and its office is extended to questions of law as well as to issues of fact. On the other hand, it was clear that the steward and the lord were already preparing the position which they ultimately assumed in legal theory, that in the exercise of their functions they were beginning to monopolise the power of ultimate decision and to restrict the court to the duty of preliminary presentment. The same parties are in presence in the court of ancient demesne, but the right of the suitors has been summed up by legal theory in quite the opposite direction. The suitors are said to be the judges there; legal dogmatism has set up its hard and fast definitions, and drawn its uncompromising conclusions as if all the historical facts had always been arrayed against each other without the possibility of common origins and gradual development. Is it necessary to say that the historical reality was very far from presenting that neat opposition? The ancient demesne suitors are villains in the main, though privileged in many respects, and the lord and steward are not always playing such a subordinate part that one may not notice the transition to the state of things that exists in common law manors. It is curious, anyhow, that later jurisprudence was driven to set up as to the ancient demesne court a rule which runs exactly parallel to the celebrated theory that there must be a plurality of free tenants to constitute a manor. Coke expresses it in the following way: 'There cannot be ancient demesne unless there is a court and suitors. So if there be but one suitor, for that the suitors are the judges, and therefore the demandant must sue at common law, there being a failure of justice within the manor[822].' We shall have to speak of this rule again when treating of classes in regard to manorial organisation. But let us notice, even now, that in this view of the ancient demesne court the suitors are considered as the cardinal element of its constitution. The same notion may be found already in trials of the fourteenth and even of the thirteenth century. A curious case is reported in the Year Books of 11/12 Edw. III[823]. Herbert of St. Quentyn brought a writ of false judgment against John of Batteley and his wife, the judgment having been given in the court of Cookham, an ancient demesne manor. The suitors, or suit-holders as they were called there, sent up their record to the King's Bench, and many things were brought forward against the conduct of the case by the counsel for the plaintiff, the defendant trying to shield himself by pleading the custom of the manor to account for all unusual practices. The judges find, however, that one point at least cannot be defended on that ground.