benefit. But if he had but some part of his county, then his
jurisdiction and courts, saving perhaps in those possessions that were
his own, were held by him to the King's use and benefit; that is, he
commonly supplied the office which the sheriffs regularly executed in
counties that had no earls, and whence they came to be called viscounts.
The court of the county that had an earl was held by the earl and the
bishop of the diocese, after the manner of the sheriffs' turns to this
day; by which means both the ecclesiastical and temporal laws were given
in charge together to the country. The causes of vavasors or vavasories
appertained to the cognizance of this court, where wills were proved,
judgment and execution given, cases criminal and civil determined.

The King's thanes had the like jurisdiction in their thane lands as
lords in their manors, where they also kept courts.

Besides these in particular, both the earls and King's thanes, together
with the bishops, abbots, and vavasors, or middle thanes, had in the
high court or parliament in the kingdom a more public jurisdiction,
consisting first of deliberative power for advising upon and assenting
to new laws; secondly, giving counsel in matters of state and thirdly,
of judicature upon suits and complaints. I shall not omit to enlighten
the obscurity of these times, in which there is little to be found of
a methodical constitution of this high court, by the addition of an
argument, which I conceive to bear a strong testimony to itself, though
taken out of a late writing that conceals the author. "It is well
known," says he, "that in every quarter of the realm a great many
boroughs do yet send burgesses to the parliament which nevertheless be
so anciently and so long since decayed and gone to naught, that they
cannot be showed to have been of any reputation since the Conquest, much
less to have obtained any such privilege by the grant of any succeeding
king: wherefore these must have had this right by more ancient usage,
and before the Conquest, they being unable now to show whence they
derived it."

This argument, though there be more, I shall pitch upon as sufficient to
prove: First, that the lower sort of the people had right to session
in Parliament during the time of the Teutons. Secondly, that they were
qualified to the same by election in their boroughs, and if knights of
the shire, as no doubt they are, be as ancient in the counties. Thirdly
if it be a good