y,
corruption, or jury timidity, and especially when the powerful
barons defied the courts. The Chancery also sought to address
causes which were impeded in their regular course, which often
involved assaults, batteries, and forcible dispossessions.

Disputes within the royal household were administered by the
King's steward. He received and determined complaints about acts
or breaches of the peace within twelve miles around the King's
person or "verge". He was assisted by the marshall in the "court
of the hall" and by the clerk of the market when imposing fines
for trading regulation violations in the "court of the market".

Ecclesiastical courts were successful in their competition with
the secular courts for jurisdiction over testamentary matters
[concerning wills] and succession [no will] to chattels.

There were local courts of the vill, borough, manor, hundred,
county, sheriff, escheator, and royal bailiff, with overlapping
jurisdictions. The county court in its full session, that is, as
it attended the itinerant justices on their visitation, contained
the archbishops, bishops, priors, earls, barons, knights, and
freeholders, and from each township four men and the reeve, and
from each borough twelve burgesses. It was still the folkmote, the
general assembly of the people. In 1293, suitors who could not
spend 40s. a year within their county were not required to attend
their county court.

The most common plea in the hundred court was trespass. It also
heard issues concerning services arising out of land, detention of
chattels, small debts, wounding or maiming of animals, and
personal assaults and brawls not amounting to felony. It met every
three weeks. The sheriff held his turn twice a year and viewed
frankpledge once a year.

When Edward I came to the throne, over half of the approximately
600 hundred courts had gone under the jurisdiction of a private
lord owing to royal charter, prescriptive right, and usurpation.
The sheriff's powers in these hundreds varied. In some, the
sheriff had no right of entry.

In the manor courts, actions of debt, detinue, and covenant were
frequent. Sometimes there are questions of a breach of warranty of
title in agreements of sale of land. Accusations of defamation
were frequent; this offense could not be taken to the King's
court, but it had been recognized as an offense in the Anglo-Saxon
laws. In some cases, the damages caused are specifically stated.
For instance, d