assize, that is to say, the established standard of
amount, price, or quality of bread or beer, the lord of the manor
drawing his authority to hold such a court either actually or
supposedly from a grant from the king, such a court was called a court
leet. With the court leet was usually connected the so-called view of
frank pledge. Frank pledge was an ancient system, according to which
all men were obliged to be enrolled in groups, so that if any one
committed an offence, the other members of the group would be obliged
to produce him for trial. View of frank pledge was the right to punish
by fine any who failed to so enroll themselves. In the court baron and
the customary court it was said by lawyers that the body of attendants
were the judges, and the steward, representing the lord of the manor,
only a presiding official; while in the court leet the steward was the
actual judge of the tenants. In practice, however, it is probable that
not much was made of these distinctions, and that the periodic
gatherings were made to do duty for all business of any kind that
needed attention, while the procedure was that which had become
customary on that special manor, irrespective of the particular form
of authority for the court.

[Illustration: Interior of Fourteenth Century Manor House, Sutton
Courtenay, Berkshire. (_Domestic Architecture in the Fourteenth
Century._)]

The manor court was presided over by a steward or other officer
representing the lord of the manor. Apparently all adult male tenants
were expected to be present, and any inhabitant was liable to be
summoned. A court was usually held in each manor, but sometimes a lord
of several neighboring manors would hold the court for all of these
in some one place. As most manors belonged to lords who had many
manors in their possession, the steward or other official commonly
proceeded from one manor or group of manors to another, holding the
courts in each. Before the close of the thirteenth century the records
of the manor courts, or at least of the more important of them, began
to be kept with very great regularity and fulness, and it is to the
mass of these manor court rolls which still remain that we owe most of
our detailed knowledge of the condition of the body of the people in
the later Middle Ages. The variety and the amount of business
transacted at the court were alike considerable. When a tenant had
died it was in the meeting of the manor court that his succ