LEFT is the precinct or district within the cognisance or subject to the jurisdiction of a courteleet. Sometimes the term is used to denote the court itself, the full style of which is "the court beet and view of frank-pledge." The court-feet is also called a law-day, as being the ordinary tribunal.
I.—Origin of flie Court feet, One of the least improbable derivations of the word " lent " seems to be that which deduces lath and leot from the Anglo-Saxon " lathian," or " gelathian," to assemble; both lath and lent indicating, under different modifications, a district within which the free male reaianta (residents) or iudwellers assembled at stated times, as well for prepa ration for military defence as for purposes of police and criminal juris diction. Of the first of those objects scarcely any trace exists; in the modern lent. The title of the court as a " view of frank-pledge," points to its former importance under the extensive system or police introduced or perfected by King Alfred, which required that all free men above twelve years of age should bo received into 11 decennary, or tithing, called in Yorkshire and other parts of the north, " ten inen tale " (number, tale, or tuily of ten men), and forming a society of not lees than ten friborge ur freeborrows (freemen), each of %%hum was to be torhee--that is, pledge or security for the good conduct of the others. So the German " beige," pledge or surety (lidejusesore appears to be derived from the verb " borgen," to give or take ou credit. In this sense, in the • Frenklin'a 'Tale,' Chaucer has," )lave here my faith to borwe ;" and in the • Squire's Tale,' " St John to berwo." In the ballad of ' The paining in the North; preserved in Percy'e ' Banque* of Ancient Poetry,' Lady Northumberland, proposing to her Imsbon1 to place herself Is the bands of Queen Elizabeth, as a surety or hostage for his submission, says," Thy faithful ben-ow I will be." When a party was accused of a crime, hie tithing was to produce hitn within 31 days, or pay the legal mulct for the °dance, uuleas they proved on oath that no others of the tithing were implicated in the crime, andeenguged to produce him as mon he could be toned. For great crimes the uffeuder was expelled from the tithing, upon which be became an outlaw.
The duty of inspecting a decennary or tithing was called a view of frank-pledge, the freeborrowe buying received from their Norman conquerons the designation well known in Normandy of frank-pledges. The principal or eldest of these trceborrows, and its such the person first sworn, who n-as denominated the tithing-man, sometime the brai11xrrtrugh ur chief pledge, sometimes the borsholder or borsalder (beefless-alder, or renter or ruler of the pledges), and sometimes the reeve, was in an especial manner responsible for the good conduct of each of his co-pledges, and appears to have had an authority analogous to that still exercised by the conetable, an officer elected by the mei:Lute for the preservation of the peace within the district constituting the lcet, tithing, or coneusblewick. This officer is in many places called the headborough, which designation, as well as those of borsholder and tithingenan, is frequently used by the legislature as synonymous with that of constable. It is probable that all the frank-pledgee were num lured according to rank or seniority, as in places where more than two constable* are requited, the third °Meer is called the thinlberough. Blecketone, misled by the sound, suppoees beadleurungli to be the chief person or head of a them or borough. This derivation will remind the leaden of ' liudibnur ' of the " wooden hostile" (stooks), which " None arc able to break thorough, nall they're treed by Aaqd of borouph." The Holkham manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon customary law says ; "A tithing (there called decimatio) contains, according to local usage, ten, seventy, or eighty men, who are all bound (debent) to be pledges (fidejussores) for each other. So that if any of them be accused (calumpniam patitur), the rest must produce him in court; and if he deny the offence, he is to have lawful purgation by the tithing (that is, by their swearing to their belief of his innocence). A tithing it in some places called a ward, as forming one society, subject to observa tion or inspection within a town or hundred. In some places it is called " borch ; " that is, pledges for the reasons above stated. In others it is called tithing (in the original, decimatio), because it ought to contain ten persons at the least."
The assizes of Clarendon directed " that all the customs of frank pledge should be observed; that a person receiving men into his house or land. or within his jurisdiction (sokel, who were not in frank-pledge, should be answerable for their appearance, and that no franchise or liberty Penmen') should exclude the sheriff from entering for the purpose of seeing that views of frank-pledge were duly held." Lects arc either public or private. The public lest ie an assembly held in each of the larger divisions of a county, called a hundred, at which all freemen who are resiants within the hundred are bound to attend in person or by their representatives. These representatives were the reeves or chiefs of their respective tithings. whether desig nated by that or by any of the other appellations, each of whom was accompanied by four good and lawful men of, and elected by, the tithing which deputed them. This public court-leet was held formerly by the royal governor of the county, the ealdorman of the Saxons, the earl of the Danes, the comes or count of the Normans. This great functionary was accompanied by the shire-reeve, an officer elected by the county to collect the king's rents and the other branches of the royal revenue, who in the absence of the ealdormau, presided in the court, and governed the county as his deputy, whence he is called by the Normans a vice-comes or vicount, though in English he retained the name of shire-reeve or sheriff, the designation connected with his original and more humble duties. This public court, which was originally called the folkmote, being held successively in each hundred in the course of a circuit performed by the sheriff, acquired the name of the sheriff's tours, by which name, though itself a court-leet, it is now distinguished from inferior private leeta. The latter courts appear to have been ere ited at a very early period by grants from the crown obtained by the owners of extensive domains (which afterwards be came manors) (Maeoej, and most frequently by religious houses, for the purpose of relieving their tenants and those who resided upon their lands from the obligation of attending the tourn or lest of the hundred, by providing .a domestic tribunal, before which the resianta might take the oath of allegiance and the frank-pledges might ba inspected, without the trouble of attending the tonsil. and to which as an apparently necessary consequence, the criminal jurisdiction of the precinct or district was immediately transferred. In these private leeta the grantee, called the lord of the leet, performed the duties which, in the public lest or tourn, after the ealdorman or earl had permanently absented him elf, feU upon the sherifL Their duties he might perform either personally or 1 y his steward ; and as a compensation for this, and his trouble in obtaining the franchise, it appears to have been the practice for the great land owner who by his money and his influence had procured the grant of a private leet to claim from reeients a certain small annual payment by the name of certum letce. The tenants within the precincts of a private lea, whether in boroughs, towns, er manors, formed a body politic wholly independent of the tourn or leet of the hundred ; whilst such upland, or unprivileged, towns as had not been formed into or included within any private leet, still appeared, each by its tithing-man or reeve and tour men of the tithing, and formed part of the body politic of the hundred. Each of these com munities appears to have exercised most of those rights which it has latterly been supposed could not exist without incorporation. In many cakes and boroughs the ancient authority of the court-leet was in later times superseded by charter of incorporation, in some of which the important right of popular election of magistrates was ',reserved entire; whilst in the great majority of cases the right, thmigh con tinued in name, was fettered, if not rendered altogether nugatory, by restrictions of various characters and degrees, which are still to be seen in boroughs not regulated by the Municipal Corporation Act. In other respects the course prescribed by these charters was adapted to the changes which had taken place in the habits of the people since the institution of the court lett. . Many of the functions of the magistrates in the new incorporations were borrowed from the then comparatively recent institution of justices of the peace.