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The court leet was a historical court baron (a type of manorial court) of England and Wales and Ireland that exercised the "view of frankpledge" and its attendant police jurisdiction, [1] which was normally restricted to the hundred courts.
The word "leet", as used in reference to special court proceedings, dates from the late 13th century, from Anglo-French lete and Anglo-Latin leta of unknown origin, with a possible connection to the verb "let". [2]
At a very early time in medieval England, the Lord of the Manor exercised or claimed certain feudal rights over his serfs and feudal tenants. The exercise of those rights was combined with manorial administrative concerns, in his court baron. However this court had no power to deal with criminal acts.
Criminal jurisdiction was held by the hundred courts; the country was divided into hundreds, and there was a hundred court for each of them. Each hundred comprised 100 hides, with each hide being an area of land of variable size that is enough to support one entire household. A tithing was an area of 10 hides, which therefore originally corresponded to about 10 households. The heads of each household were judicially bound to the others in their tithing by an arrangement called frankpledge, which created collective responsibility for behaviour within their tithing. The hundred court monitored this system, in a process called view of frankpledge, with the tithing reporting any wrongdoing in their area, and handing over the perpetrators among them. If the wrongdoing was minor, it would be dealt with by the hundred court, but serious crimes were passed up to the shire court.
Before feudalism, hundred courts had also dealt with administrative matters within their area, such as bridge repairs, road conditions, and so forth, but the courts baron had largely superseded that in practice, and some manorial lords began claiming authority over criminal matters as well. Eventually, the king formally granted certain trusted lords with the legal authority that had been held by the hundred court over the tithings in the lord's manor, the most important of those being view of frankpledge. [3] The group of tithings that were located within each manor had come to be called a leet, and hence, in the later Middle Ages these judicial powers came to be called court leet.
The quo warranto proceedings of Edward I established a sharp distinction between the court baron, exercising strictly manorial rights, and the court leet, exercising the powers formerly held by the hundred court, emphasising that the ability to hold court leet depended upon a royally granted franchise. [1] However, in many areas it became customary for the court baron and court leet to meet together, as a single operation.
The court leet was a court of record, and its duty was not only to view the pledges, which were the freemen's oaths of peacekeeping and good practice in trade, but also to try with a jury, and punish, crimes committed within the jurisdiction; more serious crimes were committed to the king's justices. [1] [3] Despite the presence of a jury, it was not trial by jury as understood today. The court leet had developed while the jury system was still evolving; the jury indicted wrongdoers, stood witness, and helped decide on punishment.
It also developed as a means of proactively ensuring that standards in such matters as sales of food and drink, and agriculture, were adhered to. The Alcester Court Leet contained the following wording: [4]
To enquire regularly and periodically into the proper condition of watercourses, roads, paths, and ditches; to guard against all manner of encroachments upon the public rights, whether by unlawful enclosure or otherwise; to preserve landmarks, to keep watch and ward in the town, and overlook the common lands, adjust the rights over them, and restraining in any case their excessive exercise, as in the pasturage of cattle; to guard against the adulteration of food, to inspect weights and measures, to look in general to the morals of the people, and to find a remedy for each social ill and inconvenience. To take cognisance of grosser crimes of assault, arson, burglary, larceny, manslaughter, murder, treason, and every felony at common law.
The court generally sat only a few times each year, sometimes just annually. A matter was introduced into the court by means of a "presentment", from a local man or from the jury itself. Penalties were in the form of fines or imprisonment.
Attendance at the court leet was often compulsory for those under its jurisdiction, with fines being meted out for non-attendance. The ability of the court to levy a fine was always subject to limitations, but the limits were never updated to account for inflation over the centuries; for those courts leet that still exist, the fine has effectively become merely nominal – 2p for example in the case of Laxton. [5]
Courts leet generally had a jury formed from the freehold tenants, as bondsmen could not give an oath (jury means persons having taken an oath). [1] The jury's role was similar to that of the doomsmen of the Anglo-Saxons and included electing the officers (other than the Steward who was appointed by the lord), bringing matters to the attention of the court and deciding on them. [6] [7]
The officers of courts leet could include some or all of the following: [4] [6] [8] [9]
The introduction of magistrates gradually rebalanced power away from manorial lords. Magistrates were later given authority over view of frankpledge, which effectively negated the remaining significance of the court leet, and they gradually ceased to be held, largely dying out. Following the collapse of the feudal system, and subsequent rise of the Reformation, civil parishes had largely taken over the remaining authority of courts baron, and tithings were seen as a parish sub-division. [1]
Nevertheless, courts leet technically survived into the late 20th century, though almost all of the small number which still operated had become merely ceremonial, simply forming a way of promoting or celebrating their local area. Despite this, their legal jurisdiction over crime was only abolished in 1977, by section 23 of the Administration of Justice Act 1977. However, one exception was allowed: the court leet for the manor of Laxton, Nottinghamshire, [5] which had continued to operate judicially; [11] Laxton retains the open-field system of farming, which had been replaced everywhere else by the 18th century (as a result of the process of enclosure), and required the court in order to administer the field system.
Although the Administration of Justice Act had abolished the legal jurisdiction of the other courts leet, it emphasised that "any such court may continue to sit and transact such other business, if any, as was customary for it". Schedule 4 to the Act specified the "business" which was to be considered customary, which included the taking of presentments relating to matters of local concern and – in some cases – the management of common land. [12]
The following courts leet were exempted from abolition by the Administration of Justice Act 1977, and were known to be still functioning in 2010:
In addition, the following courts leet are in operation, having been re-established, or continued, but without statutory authority (not having been preserved by the 1977 act):
By contrast, the statutory backing for the following courts leet was preserved by the 1977 Act, but it is not clear whether they are still operative:
The following courts leet are also listed here for unclear reasons, despite not having been exempted from abolition by the 1977 act, and despite it not being clear whether they are still operative:
Copyhold was a form of customary land ownership common from the Late Middle Ages into modern times in England. The name for this type of land tenure is derived from the act of giving a copy of the relevant title deed that is recorded in the manorial court roll to the tenant; not the actual land deed itself. The legal owner of the manor land remained the mesne lord, who was legally the copyholder, according to the titles and customs written down in the manorial roll. In return for being given land, a copyhold tenant was required to carry out specific manorial duties or services. The specific rights and duties of copyhold tenants varied greatly from one manor to another and many were established by custom. By the 19th century, many customary duties had been replaced with the payment of rent.
Wingrave is a village in Buckinghamshire, England, about four miles north east of Aylesbury and three miles south west of Wing.
Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The titles date to the English feudal system. The lord enjoyed manorial rights as well as seignory, the right to grant or draw benefit from the estate. The title continues in modern England and Wales as a legally recognised form of property that can be held independently of its historical rights. It may belong entirely to one person or be a moiety shared with other people.
The Salford Hundred was one of the subdivisions of the historic county of Lancashire in Northern England (see:Hundred. Its name alludes to its judicial centre being the township of Salford. It was also known as the Royal Manor of Salford and the Salford wapentake.
Frankpledge was a system of joint suretyship common in England throughout the Early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages. The essential characteristic was the compulsory sharing of responsibility among persons connected in tithings. This unit, under a leader known as the chief-pledge or tithing-man, was then responsible for producing any man of that tithing suspected of a crime. If the man did not appear, the entire group could be fined.
In Anglo-Saxon England, the reeve was a senior official with local responsibilities under the Crown, such as the chief magistrate of a town or district. After the Norman conquest, it was an office held by a man of lower rank, appointed as manager of a manor and overseer of the peasants. In this later role, historian H. R. Loyn observes, "he is the earliest English specialist in estate management."
A tithing or tything was a historic English legal, administrative or territorial unit, originally ten hides. Tithings later came to be seen as subdivisions of a manor or civil parish. The tithing's leader or spokesman was known as a tithingman.
A Shire court, or moot was an Anglo-Saxon government institution, used to maintain law and order at a local level, and perform various administrative functions, including the collection of taxes for the central government.
In English law, the term headborough, head-borough, borough-head, borrowhead, or chief pledge, referred historically to the head of the legal, administrative, and territorial unit known as a tithing, which sometimes, particularly in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, was known as a borgh, borow, or borough. The office was rendered in Latin documents as capitalis plegius or decennarius (tenner).
The manorial courts were the lowest courts of law in England during the feudal period. They had a civil jurisdiction limited both in subject matter and geography. They dealt with matters over which the lord of the manor had jurisdiction, primarily torts, local contracts and land tenure, and their powers only extended to those who lived within the lands of the manor: the demesne and such lands as the lord had enfeoffed to others, and to those who held land therein. Historians have divided manorial courts into those that were primarily seignorial – based on feudal responsibilities – and those based on separate delegation of authority from the monarch. There were three types of manorial court: the court of the honour; the court baron; and the court customary, also known as the halmote court.
A parish constable, also known as a petty constable, was a law enforcement officer, usually unpaid and part-time, serving a parish. The position evolved from the ancient chief pledge of a tithing and takes its name from the office of constable with which it was originally unconnected.
Bridge Without was a historical ward of the City of London situated to the south of the River Thames, which existed between 1550 and 1899. The area of the Bridge Without ward today forms part of the London Borough of Southwark. It was so-called to distinguish it from the ward of Bridge Within which covered the buildings on London Bridge and the nearby north bank of the Thames. Bridge Within since 1978 is formally called Bridge and Bridge Without.
Blackheath Hundred or the Hundred of Blackheath was a hundred in the county of Surrey, England. It corresponds to parts of the districts of Waverley and Guildford.
Whorwellsdown was a hundred of the English county of Wiltshire, lying in the west of the county to the south of the towns of Bradford on Avon and Melksham and to the north and east of Westbury. An arm of the hundred reached several miles southwards into Salisbury Plain, with a detached portion, a tithing of Tilshead, lying high on the Plain about five miles east of the southern arm of the rest of the hundred. At its western end, it reached as far as the Somerset county boundary.
A manorial roll or court roll is the roll or record kept of the activities of a manorial court, in particular containing entries relating to the rents and holdings, deaths, alienations, and successions of the customary tenants or copyholders. The records were invariably kept in roll form in the Middle Ages, but in the post-medieval period were more usually entered into volumes. Despite this change of format, the records often continued to be known as court rolls, although the term court books is also found.
The Administration of Justice Act 1977 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Guildable Manor is a Court Leet in Southwark under the authority of the City of London, along with the King's Manor, Southwark, and the Great Liberty. The name of 'Guildable' first recorded in 1377 refers to the collection of taxes there and was adopted to distinguish this from the other manors of the Southwark area. Its legal title, according to a Royal charter granted to the City by King Edward III in 1327, is 'the ville of Southwark' i.e. 'ville = 'town'; in the more substantive charter of Edward VI it is designated 'The Town and Borough of Southwark' as is stated on its Seal. It is a preserved limited jurisdiction under the Administration of Justice Act 1977. Although neither a guild nor a livery company, the Guildable Manor does have a permanent organization, consisting of Officers and Jurors.
The Manor of Totteridge was located in Totteridge, Hertfordshire, in an area that is now part of the London Borough of Barnet. The manor was historically associated with the Manor of Hatfield. The original manor house was demolished before 1821 and the manorial estate known as Totteridge Common was transferred to a charity, the Totteridge Manor Association, in 1954.
Certain former courts of England and Wales have been abolished or merged into or with other courts, and certain other courts of England and Wales have fallen into disuse.
From the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the death of King John in 1216, England was governed by the Norman and Angevin dynasties. The Norman kings preserved and built upon the institutions of Anglo-Saxon government. They also introduced new institutions, in particular, feudalism. For later developments in English government, see Government in late medieval England.
