第82章

the inquiry, says the Assize, shall be made by twelve of the most lawful men of the county, and by four of the most lawful men of every township. What is there in these words to show that the two sets were to be taken from different classes? And does not the expression 'lawful,' extending to both sets, point to people who are 'worthy of their law' that is to free men? The Assize of Clarendon and the constitution of the tourn are especially interesting because they give a new bearing to an old institution: both divisions of the population which they have in view appear in the ordinary hundred and county court, and in the 'law day' of the 'great' hundred instituted for the view of frankpledge. In the ordinary court the lord, his steward, and the reeve, priest, and four men, interchange, according to the clear statement of Leg. Henrici I. c. 7, that is to say, the vill is to be represented either by the lord, or by his steward, or again by the six men just mentioned. They are not called out as representing different classes and interests, but as representing the same territorial unity. If the landlord does not attend personally or by his personal representative, the steward, then six men from the township attend in his place. The question arises naturally, where is one to look for the small freeholders in the enactment? However much we may restrict their probable number, their existence cannot be simply denied or disregarded.

It does not seem likely that they were treated as landlords (terrarum domini), and one can hardly escape the inference that they are included in the population of the township, which appears through the medium of the six hundredors: another hint that the class division underlying the whole structure did not coincide with the feudal opposition between freeholder and villain. Again, in the great hundred for the view of frankpledge, which is distinguished from the ordinary hundred by fuller attendance, and not by any fundamental difference in constitution, all men are to appear who are 'free and worthy of their wer and their wite:'(36*) this expression seems an equivalent to the 'free and lawful' men of other cases, and at the same time it includes distinctly the great bulk of the villain population as personally free.