[108] The lists which have reached us “leave us doubting whether any of them had received a solemn sanction from the central power.” Same “History of English Law,” ii. 508. On the origin, growth, decay, uses and abuses of the institution, see W. A. Morris, “The Frankpledge System,” London, 1910.
[109] In many places great people, lay or ecclesiastic, had somehow secured for themselves the properly royal privilege of holding the “view”; it became attached to some manors and was conveyed with them. See the petition of an abbess who claims the view of frankpledge attached to the manor of Shorwalle, Isle of Wight, which had been given her; Isabella de Forte disputes her this right, the real object of the quarrel between the two ladies being the fines levied when the view was held.
Towards the end of the fourteenth century the frankpledge had fallen into decay.
[110] “Magna Carta,” cap. 42 of the second confirmation by Henry III (1217); Stubbs’ “Select Charters,” p. 337. “Nec liceat alicui vicecomiti vel ballivo tenere turnum suum per hundredum nisi bis per annum;” “Fleta,” Lib. ii. cap. 52.
[111] See Appendix VI, p. [431].
[112] “The articles for the London eyre of 1244 are in ‘Munimenta Gildhallæ,’ i. 79; those for the eyre of 1321 are in ‘Munim. Gild.,’ ii. 347. The latter are fully seven times as long as the former and fill fifteen octavo pages.” Pollock and Maitland, “History of English Law,” ii. 519; cf. “Fleta,” i. cap. 19 and 20: “De Processu coram Justiciariis itinerantibus—De capitulis Coronæ et Itineris.”
[113] Originally, custos placitorum coronæ, record keeper of the pleas of the Crown.
[114] In existence also in France and Germany from the earliest times, thus defined in the “Grand Coutumier de Normandie,” chap. 54: “Il ne doit être crié fors pour cause criminelle, si comme pour feu et pour larcin ou pour homicide ou pour autre évident péril, si comme si aucun court sus à un autre le couteau trait. Car cil qui crie haro sans apert (obvious) péril le doit amender au prince . . . A ce cri doivent isser tous ceux qui l’ont oui.” This custom remained in use in Normandy until the French Revolution. Glasson, “Origines de la clameur de haro,” Paris, 1882. In England the statutes concerning the “hue and cry” were repealed only in 1827.
[115] “Fleta,” lib. i. cap. 19, 20. See also “Local Self-Government and Centralization,” by Toulmin Smith, 1848, pp. 220–232, 298.
[116] “Mais de cler jour, à la veue de toutz, issint qe gentz de pays puissent veer la peine et la hounte que les ditz atteintz ount, et par tant en soient les meuz chastiez.” Year, probably, 33 Ed. I; Palgrave, “Original Authority of the King’s Council,” p. 56.