[241] 'Loquebantur de tempore Sti Edwardi Regis coram W. de Wilton.'
[242] The men of King's Ripton.
[243] I do not think there is any ground for the suggestion thrown out by M. Kovalevsky in the Law Quarterly, iv. p. 271, namely, that the law of ancient demesne was imported from Normandy. Whatever the position of the villains was in the Duchy, Norman influence in England made for subjection, because it was the influence of conquest. It must be remembered that in a sense the feudal law of England was the hardest of all in Western Europe, and this on account of the invasion.
[244] Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 454: 'In those estates, which, when they had been held by the crown since the reign of Edward the Confessor, bore the title of manors in ancient demesne, very much of the ancient popular process had been preserved without any change, and to the present day some customs are maintained in them which recall the most primitive institutions.' I shall have to speak about the mode of holding the courts in another chapter.
[245] Brunner, Entstehung der Schwurgerichte, has made an epoch in the discussion of this phenomenon.
[246] I shall treat at length of the Norman Conquest in my third essay.
[247] Leg. Will. Conq. i. 29 (Schmid, p. 340).
[248] Thorold Rogers has made great use of this last class of manorial documents in his well-known books.
[249] Bracton, 271 b.
[250] Bracton, 124.