Courts
| Author | Christopher Jessel |
| Pages | 245-254 |
Chapter 13 Courts
courts leet, courts baron and other courts
13.1 COURTS BARON, CUSTOMARY AND LEET
The manor court was the essential feature of the manor: a necessary adjunct.
The word ‘court’ (Latin curia) comes from curtis, meaning ‘an enclosed place, typically a courtyard’. Many large paved areas surrounded by buildings are called courts, as in Cambridge colleges. When kings or great men gathered their close followers for advice or information the meetings were held in such places because buildings were too small and courts were sheltered from the wind. The assembly itself took its name from the meeting place. Nowadays, different types of court exist. There is the court of the monarch, attended by courtiers wearing court dress and behaving (one hopes) with courtesy, and by ladies making curtseys. There is the High Court of Parliament which is the assembly of selected people to advise the sovereign on making law and to discuss matters of general concern. There are courts of justice where professional judges perform on behalf of the Queen the duty of deciding disputes and interpreting law.
These great courts have a long history. In the Middle Ages they were mirrored at a local level but in humble fashion and without the distinction between executive, legislature and judicial functions that subsists between Whitehall, Westminster and the Strand. There was a system of shire court, hundred court
1 Watkins, C, A Treatise on Copyholds (James Bullock, 4th edn by Thomas Coventry, 1825) 1.8;
Scriven, J, A Treatise on the Law of Copyholds (Butterworth & Co, 7th edn by Archibald Brown, 1896) 422; see R v Stafferton (1610) 1 Bulstrode 54, 80 ER 756.
246 The Law of the Manor
and court leet (discussed in 19.2–19.5). In the towns there were borough courts and courts of pie-powder (considered in 21.1). There were also Church courts as explained in 20.1. The manor courts were general bodies, able to deal with any matter that arose. Until 1925 these were a source of profit to the lord and his steward. In many places they are still a convenient gathering to consider what Sch 4 to the Administration of Justice Act 1977 calls ‘matters of local concern’. The manor courts could be judicial, for settling disputes, but that jurisdiction has long been obsolete and was formally abolished (save in two cases) by the 1977 Act. Their main function was much wider.
Courts of the lord are of two types: courts baron and courts leet. A court leet with view of frankpledge was a franchise (16.3) and was not a function of the manor. Charles Watkins in the preface to Volume 2 of his book on Copyholds, says:
It has even been intimated to him that the law relative to COURTS-LEET was expected; but he must beg leave to say once more, that he was writing on the law of COPYHOLDS; and surely the law of courts-leet formed no part of that law. He might as well have a dissertation upon thunder, or upon the seat of the soul.
It will be necessary to look briefly at courts leet since they cannot be separated from courts baron, but they will be considered more fully in 19.5.
The court leet was a court of record,
Court Rolls shall (whether before or after the manorial incidents have been extinguished), for the purposes of section fourteen of the Evidence Act, 1851, be deemed to be documents of such a public nature as to be admissible in evidence on their mere production from the proper custody.
There has been a good deal of discussion as to whether there were one or two manor courts and different writers express different views, but the best view is that there was a single manor court which, from at least the sixteenth century, had two aspects.
2 Watkins op cit 2.v. See also Delacherois v Delacherois (1862) HL Cas 62 at 79, 11 ER 1254.
3 Blackstone, Sir William, Commentaries on the Laws of England IV.19.i; see also III.3.i;
Griesley’s Case (1587) 8 Co Rep 38a, 77 ER 530.
The first was the court baron (or common law court baron). Baron here does not mean a peer but refers to the legal standing of any free man who could be referred to as a baron. The barons of the court baron were the common freeholders or socmen of the manor. They were usually referred to as suitors because they owed suit of court – the obligation to attend the court when summoned. The suitors themselves comprised the court and although the lord’s steward was essential to the working of the court baron, he was not a president or judge but simply an officer. Suitors sat as the court and had a legal...
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