to a great extent as to pleas concerning the persons of the vassals. The first group of pleas stands out so clearly that there is no special necessity to dwell on its range. It need only be noticed that the proceedings concerning unfree tenures were substantially of the same kind as those affecting free or noble tenancies. A dispute as to the possession of a villenagium followed on the same lines as a trial in which a free tenement was the object in dispute, although the latter was naturally much more complex. From the technical point of view, in the first case the trial took place before the peers of the contending parties, who as suitors of the court were its judges, while in the second case the lord or his steward was the only judge and such assessors as were called up had only advisory powers. But as a matter of fact the verdicts of the court were regarded a as the expression of legal custom in the second case, and the reservation that the lord might override the customary rules was due to his exceptional position, and not to the ordinary working of manorial courts. A body of legal tradition and of conceptions of equity grew up in the lower social stratum as well as in the upper. This is especially noticeable in the case of English manorial courts, in the composition of which free and unfree elements are generally intermixed in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish between verdicts laid down by the free tenants and those contributed by the villeins. The one really important difference lay in the fact that the villeins had to look for justice to the manorial court in all cases, not only tenurial, but also personal, such as cases of battery, defamation, adultery and the like, while free men and specially men of noble birth were either directly amenable to justice by the medium of the royal tribunals or could, if they appeared before a feudal court, insist on a very strict maintenance of their privileges in view of the supervision of royal courts.
In a sense the circle of tenants constituting the peers' court was a most complete expression of the principle of equality as between allied sovereigns. The decision was formulated strictly by the peers of the contending parties, and this led, in regard to criminal accusations, to the famous doctrine of the Great Charter: "nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur nisi per judicium parium suorum vel per legemi terrae" (sect. 39). The decision of a court of peers was final. An appeal was impossible from the feudal point of view, because it would have meant a revision of the judgment by higher authority, and feudal litigants submitted not to higher authority but to a convention in which they had taken part. There were, however, two cases in which a vassal might seek redress from a source of law superior to the court of peers presided over by his suzerain. If justice was denied to him by this tribunal he could ask the overlord, that is, the suzerain of his immediate lord, to see that justice should be done. This was, however, no appeal as to law or facts, but only an attempt to set the machinery of feudal
