196 BARONY AND THANAQE April Once it is admitted that in England, as in Normandy and Scot- land, barony was an office to which were attached the justiciary rights of sac and soc, toll and team, and infangthef, together with gallows, prison, and everjrthing necessary to give effect to them, all the legal consequences of tenure by barony are seen to follow as a matter of course. Barony being an office to which was attached a court holding pleas of the Crown, it was only reasonable that on the death of a baron the king should take his barony into his own hands and keep it until the heir did homage for it and gave security for the relief. It was equally reasonable that the king should exact a higher relief for a barony to which there belonged of right a profitable court than for a mere knight's fee, and even that that relief should be arbitrary, it may be variable with the value of the barony court. Again, whether regarded as an office or as an administrative unit, a barony was from its very nature both impartible and indestructible : the lands belonging to it could indeed be divided among coheirs, as could the profits of the barony court and even the appointment of the officers necessary to it, but not the court itself and therefore not the barony. It was likewise a matter of course that every barony should have a caput, a capital mansion, where the baron lived and held his court, and that this should always pass with the barony to the heir and should never be assigned in dower. Again, if the baron was in truth a royal official responsible for the administration of justice within his barony, it becomes as easy to understand why he should have the right to remove his court into the king's court and claim the assistance of the king's justices, as it is to understand why none but his fellow barons might try him and none but the king amerce him ; why he was amerced at a higher rate than other men ; why he was exempt from service on a jury ; why he alone among the king's tenants was bound to attend the king's council when summoned and act as one of the suitors of his court ; ^ and why all these rights and duties belonged to the tenant by barony whether he held in his own right or in his wife's.^ In short, all those differences between barony and other tenures, which are inexplicable by any of the current theories as to the nature of barony, can be explained
- This is the real significance of c. xi of the Constitutions of Clarendon ; every
one of the king's subjects must attend Us council, if summoned, but only his barons ' debent interesse iudiciis curiaie regis '.
- The most significant case is that of Richard de Gosebek, who in 1278 held half the
barony of Bolum in his wife's right (Northumberland Assize Bolls, p. 356). Neither he nor any of his descendants was ever summoned to parliament, but in a list of fines on the assize roll of that year his name appears, ' quia nondum miles ', without a fine against it and with the word ' Baro ' against it in the margin {ibid. p. 383). On Richard's death in 1281 the king took the barony into his own hands until the widow took oath not to marry without his licence (Col. of Inq, ii, no. 411).
