by a single lord in whom was vested by grant or long usage the complete jurisdiction of the hundred, the district was called a liberty or honour. In such a case, there might be, and usually was, only one court held for the whole; but that court was regarded as the court of each several manor. The honour is merely the aggregate of several manors, it has no distinct or separate organization. It is therefore only necessary to inquire into the constitution and nature of the

manor courts.

The principal manorial court is the Court Baron, or the assembly of the freehold tenants of the lord. Besides the Court Baron, in many manors there is also a Court Leet, which is sometimes held with the Court Baron; and whereever, as is usually the case at the present day, there are copyholders within the manor, there is also a third court, called the Customary Court. This court, too, is often held with a Court Baron. It is, however, probable that this classification is due to the lawyers of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and that in early times no distinction between the different courts was recognized. "A Court Baron," says Sir Edward Coke, "is the chief prop and pillar of a manor, which no sooner faileth, but the manor falleth to the

ground."1

The manor courts therefore may be regarded as representing one side of the old assembly of the township, in which the jurisdiction properly belonging to the hundred court has come to be vested. The constitution of the Court Baron is consistent with this view. The freemen, or rather, as they have now come to be, the freehold tenants of the manor, are the judges of the court; the lord or his steward is simply the president. Thus the continuance of a sufficient number of freehold tenants within the manor is essential to the maintenance of the Court Baron, and so to the continuance of the manor itself. The functions of this court were partly administrative, partly judicial. The business relating to the interests of the various dwellers within the manor

1Coke, Copyholder, xxxi.

was here transacted; probably in some manors the customs of the manor would from time to time be declared in this court, grants of the waste sanctioned, rights of common regulated. The judicial functions of this court varied in different manors. The Court Leet, held either separately or in conjunction with the Court Baron, had jurisdiction over crimes committed within the manor, and the Court Baron over civil suits arising within the same limits, especially over all matters relating to the freehold. This jurisdiction, however, was gradually curtailed and overridden by the judicial organization carried into effect by Henry II.

manor.

ID., Ch. II. It is to the organization of the judicial institutions of the country that the rapid development of the Common Law relating to land which took place in the interval between the beginning of the reign of Henry II. and the end of that of Henry III. is owing. It has been seen, in the preceding chapter, that in the various manors the manor court had jurisdiction over questions arising within the But supreme over all was the King's Court (Curia Regis), which partook of the character of the supreme Court Baron, and was also the chief national legislative and judicial institution of the country. The king, in his combined capacity of sovereign of the nation and lord paramount of all the land, asserted his right to adjudicate by himself or his representatives upon all questions relating to the freehold, and to control the local jurisdictions of the lords of the manors. The jurisdiction of the royal or central court was exercised partly at Westminster or elsewhere, where the king's court happened to be in attendance upon the king's person, partly by the organization of itinera or progresses by members of the Curia Regis for judicial and other purposes throughout the country.

As to the Curia Regis, see Stubbs, Select Charters, pp. 22, 131 and 141, and Const. Hist., i., pp. 598-604.

CHAPTER IV.

SEISIN.

LIT., § 324. Also, when a man will shew a feoffement made to him, or a gift in taile, or a lease for life of any lands or tenements, ther he shal say, by force of which feoffement, gift, or lease, he was seised, &c., but where one will plead a lease or grant made to him of a chatell real or personal, ther he shal say, by force of which he was possessed, &c.

Co. LIT., 153, a. Seisin," or seison, is common aswel to the English, as to the French, and signifies in the common law possession, whereof seisina, a Latin word, is made, and seisire, a verbe.

ID., 200, b. Seisin is a word of art, and in pleading is onely applied to a freehold at least, as possesse for distinction sake is to a chattell reall or personall. As if B. plead a feoffement in fee, he concludeth, virtute cujus praedict. B. fuit seisitus, &c. But if he plead a lease for yeares, he pleadeth, virtute cujus praedictus B. intravit, et fuit inde possessionatus; and so of chattells personalls, virtute cujus fuit inde possessionatus.

And this holdeth not only in case of lands or tenements which lie in liverie, but also of rents, advowsons, commons, &c., and other things that lie in grant, whereof a man hath an estate for life or inheritance.

Also when a man pleads a lease for life, or any higher estate which passeth by liverie, he is not to plead any entrie, for he is in actuall seisin by the liverie itselfe. Otherwise it is of a lease for yeares, because there he is not actually possessed untill an entrie.

ID., 266, b. Seisin is a technical term denoting the

completion of that investiture by which the tenant was admitted into the tenure, and without which no freehold could be constituted or pass. It is a word common as well to the French as to the English law. It is either in deed, which is, when the person has the actual seisin or possession; or in law, when after a descent the person on whom the lands descend has not actually entered and the possession continues vacant, not being usurped by another. When lands of inheritance are carved into different estates, the tenant of the freehold in possession, and the persons in remainder or reversion, are equally in the seisin of the fee. But in opposition to what may be termed the expectant nature of the seisin of those in remainder or reversion, the tenant in possession is said to have the actual seisin of the lands. The fee is entrusted to him. By any act which amounts to a disaffirmance by him of the title of those in the reversion, he forfeits his estate, and any act of a stranger which disturbs his estate is a disturbance of the whole fee. Disseisin seems to imply the turning the tenant out of his fee, and usurping his place and relation.-Butler's note, 217.

POLL. & W., POSSESSION, 47-49. Possession of land is of two kinds. Seisin signifies in the common law possession, but one cannot be seised, in the language of modern lawyers, as of any interest less than freehold.

Where a tenant occupies a close under a lease for years, the tenant has possession of the close, so that not only a stranger, but the freeholder himself, may be guilty of a trespass against him, but the freeholder is still seised, or, as the judges could say as late as 1490, possessed, of the freehold. The fundamental maxim that there cannot be two possessions of the same thing at the same time is evaded, successfully or not, by treating the land itself and the reversion as different things. Mr. F. W. Maitland's research has thrown much light on this curious compromise between incompatible ideas. He has shown by abundant examples that in the thirteenth century seisin and possession were absolutely synony

mous terms, and that as late as the fifteenth century seisin of chattels was commonly spoken of in pleading. But as early as the thirteenth century the introduction of tenantfarming raised for thinking English lawyers the question who had possession, the landlord or the tenant. Bracton, following Roman authority and the Roman distinction between possidere, i.e., possession in law, and in possessione esse, i.e., physical possession, in one passage boldly said of the tenant-farmer "talis non possidet licet fuerit in seisina; " he is like a bailiff or servant. But in another passage, which is followed by Fleta, we find the theory of a double seisin : "poterit enim quilibet illorum sine praeiudicio alterius in seisina esse eiusdem tenementi, unus ut de termino et alius ut de feodo vel libero tenemento." . . In any case, practical need carried the day. It would not do to say that the freeholder had parted with his seisin, for that would have cut him off from using in support of his title the convenient possessory remedies given by the assize of novel disseisin and other actions of the same class. According to the later authorities, though a man who has made a lease for years cannot of right meddle with the demesne nor the fruits thereof," he may have an assize if the termor is ejected, and may plead that he was seised in his demesne as of fee. It would not do to say that the farmer had no possession, for he, too, must have an effectual remedy against intruders; if he is not exactly disseised when he is disturbed without right it is somethnig very like it. Thus it was set

66

tled that the lessee had a kind of seisin and yet the lessor did not lose the seisin which he had before. It must be remembered that gradations of freehold tenure had already made men familiar with the conception of the lord being seised of rent and service while the tenant was seised of the land itself. Not before Littleton's time (if so early) it became the usage to confine the term seisin to estates of freehold; and accordingly we have a double terminology, corresponding to a double set of rights, and (so long as the real actions were in practical use) also of remedies.