Actions as to personal estate could be pleaded without writ, and as for the crown pleas they were reserved to the high courts170. But even in actions regarding the soil a removal to these latter was not excluded171. Evocation to a higher court followed naturally if the manorial court refused justice and such removal made the land frank fee172. The proceedings in ancient demesne could be challenged, and thereupon a writ of false judgment brought the case under the cognizance of the courts of common law. If on examination an error was found, the sentence of the lower tribunal was quashed and the case had to proceed in the higher173. Instances of examination and revision are frequent in our records174. The examination of the proceedings by the justices was by no means an easy matter, because they were constantly confronted by appeals to the custom of the manor and counter appeals to the principles of the common law of England. It was very difficult to adjust these conflicting elements with nicety. As to the point of fact, whether an alleged custom was really in usage or not, the justices had a good standing ground for decision. They asked, as a rule, whether precedents could be adduced and proved as to the usage175; they allowed a great latitude for the peculiarities of customary law; but the difficulty was that a line had to be drawn somewhere176. This procedure of revision on the whole is quite as important a manifestation of the freehold qualities of privileged villainage as pleading by writ. Men holding in pure villainage also had a manorial court to go to and to plead in, but its judicial organisation proceeded entirely from the will and power of the lord, and it ended where his will and power ended; there was no higher court and no revision for such men. The writ of false judgment in respect of tenements in ancient demesne shows conclusively that the peculiar procedure provided for the privileged villains was only an instance and a variation of the general law of the land, maintaining actionable rights of free persons. And be it again noted, that there was no sort of difference as to revision between those manors which were in the actual possession of the crown and those which were out of it177. Revision and reversal were provided not as a complement to the legal protection of the tenant against the lord, but as a consequence of that independent position of the tenant as a person who has rights against all men which is manifested in the parvum breve178. It is not without interest to notice in this connexion that the parvum breve is sometimes introduced in the law books, not as a restriction put upon the tenant, nor as the outcome of villainage, but as a boon which provides the tenant with a plain form of procedure close at hand instead of the costly and intricate process before the justices179.
Breve de 'Monstraverunt'.
If protection against the lord had been the only object of the procedure in cases of ancient demesne, one does not see why there should be a 'little writ' at all, as there was a remedy against the lord's encroachments in the writ of 'Monstraverunt,'180 pleaded before the king's justices. As it is, the case of disseisin by the lord, to whom the manor had come from the crown, was treated simply as an instance of disseisin, and brought under the operation of the writ of right, while the 'Monstraverunt' was restricted to exaction of increased services and change of customs181. The latter writ was a very peculiar one, in fact quite unlike any other writ. The common-law rule that each tenant in severalty has to plead for himself did not apply to it; all join for saving of charges, albeit they be several tenants182. What is more, one tenant could sue for the rest and his recovery profited them all; on the other hand, if many had joined in the writ and some died or withdrew, the writ did not abate for this reason, and even if but one remained able and willing to sue he could proceed with the writ183. These exceptional features were evidently meant to facilitate the action of humble people against a powerful magnate184. But it seems to me that the deviation from the rules governing writs at common law is to be explained not only by the general aim of the writ, but also by its origin.
Petition.
In form it was simply an injunction on a plaint. When for some reason right could not be obtained by the means afforded by the common law, the injured party had to apply to the king by petition. One of the most common cases was when redress was sought for some act of the king himself or of his officers, when the consequent injunction to the common law courts or to the Exchequer to examine the case invariably began with the identical formula which gave its name to the writ by which privileged villains complained of an increase of services; monstravit or monstraverunt N.N.; ex parte N.N. ostensum est:—these are the opening words of the king's injunctions consequent upon the humble remonstrations of his aggrieved subjects185. Again, we find that the application for the writ by privileged villains is actually described as a plaint186. In some cases it would be difficult to tell on the face of the initiatory document, whether we have to do with a 'breve de monstraverunt' to coerce the manorial lord, or with an extraordinary measure taken by the king with a view to settling his own interests187.
The 'Monstraverunt' on the king's own land.
And this brings me to the main point. Although the writ under discussion seems at first sight to meet the requirement of the special case of manors alienated from the crown, on closer inspection it turns out to be a variation of the peculiar process employed to insist upon a right against the crown. Parallel to the 'Monstraverunt' against a lord in the Common Pleas we have the 'Monstraverunt' against the king's bailiff in the Exchequer. The following mandate for instance is enrolled in the eventful year 1265: 'Monstraverunt Regi homines castri sui de Brambur et Schotone quod Henricus Spring constabularius castri de Brambur injuste distringit eos ad faciendum alia servicia et alias consuetudines quam facere consueverunt temporibus predecessorum Regis et tempore suo. Ideo mandatum est vicecomiti quod venire etc. predictum Henricum a die Pasche in xv dies ad respondendum Regi et predictis hominibus de predicta terra et breve etc.'188 There is not much to choose between this and the enrolment of a 'breve de monstraverunt' in the usual sense beyond the fact that it is entered on a Roll of Exchequer Memoranda. In 1292 a mandate of King Edward I to the Barons of the Exchequer is entered in behalf of the men of Costeseye in Norfolk who complained of divers grievances against Athelwald of Crea, the bailiff of the manor. The petition itself is enrolled also, and it sets forth, that whereas the poor men of the king of the base tenure in the manor of Costeseye held by certain usages, from a time of which memory runs no higher, as well under the counts of Brittany as under the kings to whom the manor was forfeited, now bailiff Athelwald distrains them to do other services which ought to be performed by pure villains. They could sell and lease their lands in the fields at pleasure, and he seizes lands which have been sold in this way and amerces them for selling; besides this he makes them serve as reeves and collectors, and the bailiff of the late Queen Eleanor tallaged them from year to year to pay twenty marks, which they were not bound to do, because they are no villains to be tallaged high and low189. Such is the substance of this remarkable document, to which I shall have to refer again in other connexions. What I wish to establish now is, that we have on the king's own possessions the exact counterpart of the 'breve de monstraverunt.' The instances adduced are perhaps the more characteristic because the petitioners had not even the strict privilege of ancient demesne to lean upon, as one of the cases comes from Northumberland, which is not mentioned in Domesday, and the other concerns tenants of the honour of Richmond.
There can be no doubt that the tenantry on the ancient demesne had even better reasons for appealing to immemorial usage, and certainly they knew