Procedural Innovation and Institutional Change in Medieval English Manorial Courts

Abstract

In England during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the royal courts cast a longer and longer shadow over private and local jurisdictions. By a series of steps embracing much innovation, the custom of the king's court gradually became the common law of England, and the royal courts asserted their supremacy over other jurisdictions in many areas. Foremost among these were disputes over freehold land and cases involving felonies. It has been suggested that the royal innovations’ jurisdictional effects on private courts were “neither intended nor foreseen.” Nonetheless, they reduced private jurisdictions—with the exception of the palatinates—to constitutional insignificance during the thirteenth century. Occasional baronial objections, such as that enshrined in clause thirty-four of Magna Carta or the bluff waving of a rusty sword at a quo warranto inquest do not disguise this basic fact of English legal and constitutional history.

The Changing Role of Manorial Officers and Manor Courts

“…17 The jury would then investigate and present all breaches of the articles at the following session, where they are recorded in the surviving rolls. 18 Aspects of this process are occasionally glimpsed in the records of the case-study manors. At Downham, in 1410, John Deye and Simon Cok as jurors were amerced for 'not coming at the appointed time to receive their charge', presumably an order to respond to the articles, as was a capital pledge in 1411.…”

Trials in manorial courts in late medieval England

“…It seems as if the defendants could usually choose the mode of trial and that if they were unable to do so, the court would decide for them. 52 Whatever the reasons, the trial jury is frequently mentioned in the court rolls and the fact that parties before the court sought this privilege and were prepared to pay for it demonstrates its popularity as a superior mode of proof.…”

Seigniorial control of villagers litigation beyond the manor in later medieval England*

“…Manorial civil suits dry up in court rolls from this period, mainly, it seems, because court sessions were now being held too infrequently to meet litigants' needs. 59 At this time, plaintiffs appear to have turned to alternative jurisdictions when suing coresidents of their own villages, a process that perhaps lies behind the 'explosion' of fidei lesio actions in church courts over the course of the fifteenth century. 60 The mid fifteenth-century failure of manorial civil justice almost certainly explains why the Cambridgeshire by-laws on 'illicit litigation' were written down in the period from the fourteenforties to the fourteen-sixties, and it probably also accounts for the tendency for manorial 'illicit litigation' entries to become especially numerous around the same period.…”