168 BARONY AND THANAOE April ' pleas of the sword ', which the dukes claimed as their own, insisting that such of their vassals as possessed them did so by ducal grant, explicit or implicit.^ There were other pleas of the sword to which that name was afterwards restricted — house- breaking (hamfare), arson, rape, robbery, and assault in pro- tected places such as the duke's high road, together with homicide open or secret {murdrum), and the justice of the host and of money ^ — one or more of which might be held by a baron ; but they were not of the essence of barony as the other pleas were. Holding pleas of the sword, the Norman baron was more than a feudal lord, he was a ducal officer, albeit an hereditary one ; and his barony was more than a fief, it was an administrative unit. The legal consequences are interesting. Most Norman baronies were fees of the hauberk, that is to say, were held by knight-service, and as such were subject to the rights of wardship, relief, and aids claimed by the duke in all such fees ; ^ but the relief for a barony, unlike that for a vavasory, remained arbitrary down to the close of the twelfth century,^ when it was fixed at £100 as against £15 for a single knight's fee.^ In Normandy equal division among males was the rule of succession ; but the dukes insisted that the barony, like the great fiefs which had their origin in the hereditary offices of count or viscount, like the duchy itself, was indivisible and must descend entire to the eldest son.^ In a vavasory, however large, no one manor had precedence of the others, and the lord had no court with juris- diction in all his manors ; but in every barony, however small, there was one castle or manor, known as the mansio capitalis, where the lord had a court in which his pleas of the sword were held for all the men of the barony.' Finally, where the simple avront il e leur chatiex.' Cf. c. lix : 'Chascuns sires oit plez de son larron e sa s^^norie en sa terre, esceptez les plez qui apartienent au due. . . .' ' Powicke, op. cil. p. 81.
- Const, et lust. c. 9 ; Tres Ancien Coutumier, cc. liii, Ixx. The list of pleas of the
sword in the last should be compared with the list of pleas of the Crown in Cnut's Laws, cc. 12-15, 64.
- Haskins, op. cit. p. 19.
- Tr^s Ancien Coutumier, c. xlvii : 'Quens (Comes) relevera sa comt^e si comme
conte, e li baron sa baronic de leur segnors selons la coutume du pais : le fieu de hauberc si comme il doit. Li autre tenement seront relev6 par acres, e chascone acre de terre dona xii deniers e del chevel manoir v s.'
- Ibid. c. Ixxxv : 'Les baronies sont relevees en vers le roi par c. livres. Fiez de
chevalier est releveez chascuns par xv livres de qui que il soit tenuz, ou del roi en chief ou d'autre.' M. Tardif has shown that the first part of the Coutumier, ending at c. Ixv, is older than the second, which belongs to the beginning of the thirteenth century. • Powicke, pp. 67-9, 68, 101. ^ An assize was made at Domfront in 1155 that all tenants-in-chief in Normandy might if they wished summon all trials by battle to their mansio capitalis : ibid. p. 86 n. We may compare this with the Leges Henrici, c. 55, which allows every lord to summon his man to stand to right in his court, and if the man lives in the remotest manor of the honor, he must still go to the plea.
