[g] Selden on the authority of Polydore.
The vast powers of the county court, when the freeholders were all summoned and actually sat in judgement, may be understood by two facts. One, the conquerors half-brother, and Lanfrank, archbishop of Canterbury, had a dispute about certain lands and tenements in Kent. The archbishop petitioned the king, who issued hiz writ, and summoned the freemen of the county, to take cognizance of the suit. After three days trial, the freemen gave judgement for the archbishop, and the decision waz final.
In like manner, two peers of the relm, a Norman and an Italian, submitted a title in fifteen manors, two townships, and many liberties, to the freeholders of the county, whose judgement waz allowed by the king.[h]
[h] Selden. Chap. 48.
[125] "Magnaque et comitum æmulatio, quibus primus apud principem suum locus; et principum, cui plurimi et acerrimi comites."[] The princes kept az many of these retainers in their service in time of peace, az they could support. "Hæc dignitas, hæ vires, magno semper elestorum juvenum globo circumdari, in pace, decus, in bello, præsidium. Ibid."
[] Tacitus de mor Germ. c. 13.
[126] In the time of Henry II, there were in England eleven hundred and fifteen castles, and az many tyrants az lords of castles. William of Newbury says, in the reign of Stephen, "Erant in Anglia quodammodo tot reges, vel potius tyranni, quot domini castellorum." It waz the tyranny of theze lords or their deputies, which rendered the intervention of twelv judges of the naborhood, highly necessary to preserve the peeple from the impositions of their rapacious masters. Hence the privilege of this mode of trial derived an inestimable valu.
[127] Connecticut.
[128] About the year 580.
[129] Heriots or reliefs.