of right to land, advowsons, debt, and dower, ‘avoiding the doubtful
outcome of battle’. From the general writ of right there developed the
writ ‘praecipe quod reddat’ which, as set out by ‘Glanvill’, instructed
the sheriff to ‘order’ a defendant to return a tenement or repay a debt
to the plaintiff, and if he refused, to summon him before the king or his
justices at a certain date to show why.^104
English land-law was a by-product of the ‘tremendous authority of
royal majesty’^105 over the magnates which Norman kings inherited from
their Anglo-Saxon predecessors and applied to the disputes of the
knightly society which they transported from France. The assize of
novel disseisinmay have been devised first of all to prevent the lord him-
self from taking back a tenement for an alleged misdemeanour on the
tenant’s part, and mort d’ancestorwas almost certainly directed first
against the lord who tried to keep an heir out of his inheritance.^106 The
king required that lords vouch for (‘warrant’, guarantee) their grants to
tenants when outsiders claimed their tenements and, if the claims were
successful, that they gave them others of equal value. Such obligations
were extended down the generations. ‘Glanvill’ states baldly that ‘the
heirs of donors are bound to warrant to the donees and their heirs
reasonable gifts’.^107 Tenants (and virtually all lords were the tenants of
others for some of their lands) became eager for the king’s charters and
writs. The wealth of the subjects who wanted these favours combined
with the financial necessities of the king to give the law what Maitland
called ‘its most repulsive features: if anyone has a right in England, that
right must be a saleable commodity’.^108 Of the three thousand or so
known grants of Henry II, half were sought in the first few years of the
reign, predominantly by monasteries and cathedral chapters, to confirm
the landholding situation as it was claimed to have been before the
Anarchy. The grants that we have from Henry II were largely preserved
by the churches which received them: the almost 500 royal acts
recorded in the chancery’s new charter rolls for the first year of King
John (1199–1216) suggest that grants had always been more equally
split between churches and individual laity.^109
Often a royal charter included protection from being sued for a free
132 Judicial Systems of France and England
(^104) Royal Writs in England, 195–260, 413–38, 482–95; Glanvill, 136–41; P. Hyams,
‘Warranty and Good Lordship in Twelfth Century England’, Law and History Review, 5
(1987), 437–503.
(^105) Leges Henrici Primi, 96–7 (6. 2a); J. Campbell, ‘The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A
Maximum View’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 87 (1995).
(^106) S. F. C. Milsom, The Legal Framework of English Feudalism(Cambridge UP, 1976).
(^107) Glanvill, 74; Hyams, ‘Warranty and Good Lordship’, 476.
(^108) F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2
vols. (Cambridge UP, 1898), ii. 327.
(^109) J. C. Holt, ‘The Writs of Henry II’, in The History of English Law: Centenary Essays on
‘Pollock and Maitland’, ed. John Hudson (Oxford UP for the British Academy, 1996).