Bracton: Thorne Edition: English. Volume 2, Page 301

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Bracton Online -- English

Volume 2, Page 301

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[001] inexperienced. ¹Civil pleas in rem and in personam to be determined in the court of
[002] the lord king are determined before various kinds of justices. For the king has
[003] many courts, his own court, [as the aula regia,] and ²the chief justices who determine
[004] the king's own suits and those of all others by plaint or by reason of a
[005] privilege or liberty, as where a person ought not to be impleaded save before the
[006] lord king himself.³ He also has a court and justices resident in the bench, who
[007] take cognisance of all pleas they are authorized to entertain, who, in the absence
[008] of a warrant, have neither jurisdiction nor the power to coerce. He also has
[009] justices itinerant who travel from county to county, sometimes appointed to
[010] hear all pleas, sometimes only pleas of a certain kind, as assises of novel
[011] disseisin and mortdancestor and gaol deliveries, sometimes to hear a single
[012] assise or two and no more. In all these cases the court will be the court of
[013] the lord king. ⁴There are two recognitions, namely, novel disseisin and mortdancestor,
[014] which by Magna Carta⁵ must not be taken save in their counties,
[015] and that [they must not be taken outside unless they have been begun in their
[016] counties, for once they have been begun there they may be transferred
[017] outside, from place to place, and determined outside] with all their consequential
[018] proceedings, as convictions and certifications, when such occur. If such
[019] recognitions have been begun within the county, convictions and certifications
[020] may be carried outside it.⁶ ⁷As was said briefly above, pleas are transferred,
[021] for the reasons stated, from seignorial courts to the county court, sometimes they
[022] are decided there, sometimes transferred thence and put before the justices
[023] itinerant in the county, and thence (for many reasons) before the justices of the
[024] bench or coram rege. There are some pleas which do not reach them by transfer
[025] but must in the first instance be determined before the justices or coram rege,
[026] namely, pleas of baronies, where the demandant claims to hold immediately of the
[027] lord king in chief, [brought] by the writ of right called praecipe in capite; the reason
[028] is because the matter touches the king himself, in whole or in part. Similarly,
[029] pleas concerning the advowsons of churches and chapels and the assise of darrein
[030] presentment, because if someone other than the king should order bishops to
[031] admit a clerk and the bishop should not obey, no person other than the king
[032] would have the power to coerce him, for a bishop is not bound to admit a clerk
[033] except at the direction of the king. Pleas of dower unde nihil habet are also pleaded
[034] in the court of the lord king in the first instance. The reason is because if against
[035] the woman claiming dower the exception is raised

Notes

1. New paragraph

2. Much of what follows is repeated infra 307

3. Infra 302, iv, 280

4. New paragraph

5. Magna Carta (1215) ca. 18; (1225) ca. 12

6. Reading: ‘Si huiusmodi . . . comitatu inceptae fuerint, convictiones . . .’

7. New paragraph

7-8. Glanvill i, 3, but Br. has greatly expanded Glanvill's short passage