Warranties of Land in the Reign of Richard I

The reign of Richard I offers certain advantages to those who would A study the land law of that time. Glanvill's De Legibus shows the law as it stood immediately before the reign began; and, five years later, the earliest surviving rolls of the Curia Regis show the King's Justices applying it. These rolls have been printed and so are easily available. They carry the story from the summer of thé year 1194 to the end of the century and beyond. Unfortunately, however, they present certain difficulties. In those days, a plea of land before the King's Justices was ordinarily a lengthy matter, extended by essoins and adjournments over several terms or even years. And when one attempts to trace such a plea to its substantial hearing or to judgment one often fails. Perhaps the roll of the crucial term is missing, or the Justices have adjourned the case from Westminster into the Eyre—whereof few records survive. Perhaps the official scribe has so spelled or altered or contracted the names of the parties as to defy recognition; or the case may have ended prematurely by the death of a party or by some compromise not discoverable among the Feet of Fines. Meanwhile, moreover, one is conscious that these records of the law administered by the King's Justices tell us little or nothing of Shire Court and Court Baron, wherein much of the litigation still lay.