We have seen, secondly, that this halimot was a meeting of the community under the presidency of the steward, and that the relative functions of community and steward became very distinct only in later days. It remains to be seen how far the fundamental class division between free tenants and villains affected the management of the court. As there was but one halimot and not two, both classes had to meet and to act concurrently in it. The free people now and then assert separate claims: a chaplain wages his law on the manor of Brightwaltham that he did not defame the lord's butler, but when he gets convicted by a good inquest of jurors of having broken the lord's hedges and carried away the lord's fowls, he will not justify himself of these trespasses and departs in contempt, doubtless because he will not submit to the judgment of people who are not on a par with him.(70*)Freeholders object to being placed on ordinary juries of the manor,(71*) although they will serve as jurors on special occasions, and as a sort of controlling body over the common presenters.(72*) Amercements are sometimes taxed by free suitors.(73*) But although some division is apparent in this way, and the elements for a separation into two distinct courts are gathering, the normal condition is one which does not admit of any distinction between the two classes. We come here across the same peculiarity that we have seen in police and criminal law, namely, that the fundamental line of civil condition seems disregarded. Even when a court is mainly composed of villains, and in fact called curia villanorum, some of its suitors may be freeholders.(74*) Even in a court composed of free people, like that of Broughton, there may be villains among them.(75*) The parson, undoubtedly a free man, may appear as a villain in some rolls.(76*) Altogether, the fact has to be noticed as a very important one, that whatever business the freeholders may have had in connexion with the manorial system, this business was transacted by courts which consisted chiefly of servile tenants.(77*) In fact the presenting inquests, on which the free tenants refused to serve, would not be prevented by their composition from attainting these free tenants.
This seems strange and indeed anomalous. One point remains to be observed which completes the picture: although the great majority of the thirteenth century peasantry are mere villains, although on some manors we hardly distinguish freeholders, there is a legal requirement that there should be at least a few freeholders on every manor. Later theory does not recognise as a manor an estate composed only of demesne land and copyhold.
Freeholds are declared to be a necessary element, and should they all escheat, the manor would be only a reputed one.(78*) We have no right to treat this notion as a mere invention of later times.
