The suitors awarded default against the plaintiff because he had not appeared in person before them, and had sent an attorney, who had been admitted by the steward alone and not in full court. Stonor, C.J., remarks, 'that it is against law that the person who holds the court is not suffered to record an attorney for a plea which will be discussed before him.' The counsel for the plaintiff offer to prove that the custom of the manor did not exclude an attorney appointed before the steward, on condition that the steward should tell it to the suitors in the next court after receiving him. The case is interesting, not merely because it exhibits the suit-holders in the undisputed position of judges, but also because it shows the difficulties created by the presence of the second element of the manorial system, the seignorial element, which would neither fit exactly into an entirely communal organisation nor be ousted from it[824]. The difficulty stands quite on the same line with that which meets us in the common law manor, where the element of the communal assessors has been ultimately suppressed and conjured away, as it were, by legal theory. The results are contradictory, but on the same line, as I say. And the more we go back in time, the more we find that both elements, the lord and the community, are equally necessary to the constitution of the court. In the thirteenth century we find already that the manorial bailiffs are made responsible for the judgment along with the suitors and even before them[825]. The rolls of ancient demesne manors present a considerable variety of types, shading off from an almost complete independence of the suitors to forms which are not very different from those of common law manors. Stoneleigh may be taken as a good specimen of the first class. [The court at Stoneleigh.]