1920 BARONY AND T MANAGE 191 called the cornage area, barons who held by thanage or fee-farm,^ barons who held by drengage or serjeanty, and barons who held by knight-service, showing the same variety of service that there was among the Scottish barons and representing all the stages of evolution between the Anglo-Saxon king's thane and the Anglo- Norman baron. Any lingering doubt that thanage was indeed the main root of barony in England must yield to such proof of continuity as is afforded by such baronies as Greystoke, held by the descendants of Forne, son of Ligulf, with the same rights in the fourteenth century as in the twelfth ; ^ and Cottingham, held by the Wakes in the days of Edward I with the same rights as Gamel, son of Osbert, the king's thane, held them T.R.E. with sac and soc, toll and team.^ The identity of barony in England and in Scotland being established so far as service is concerned, it remains only to ascertain whether that identity extended to the justiciary rights attached to barony. Just as at the beginning of the twelfth century it was thane's law to have sac and soc, toll and team, and infangthef, so at the end of the thirteenth century we find a Northumbrian Grand Jury asserting that all barons had gallows and the assize of bread and beer in their baronies and burghs,* and every tenant in Northumberland, Cumberland, and West- morland ever said to hold by barony — and no others save a few religious who held by frankalmoign — claiming in 1292 to have in his barony infangthef, gallows, the goods of fugitives and of felons condemned and beheaded within the barony, and the return of all writs save for pleas of the Crown. ^ As a matter of course, the shire court had no jurisdiction within the baronies ;^ and 'suit of court ', ' forinsec ' for the barons, who owed their suit to the ' Pollock and Maitland (i. 218) reject the claim of fee-farm to rank as a tenure separate from socage; but c. 37 of Magna Carta distinguishes them, and the existence of such baronies as Beanly and Hephal shows that in England down to the thirteenth century, as in Scotland down to the eighteenth century, fee-farm, imder the name of thanage, could be as noble a tenure as knight-service. It was only when all the thanage baronies save Beanly had become knight-service fiefs, and Beanly itself had come to be regarded as held only by the serjeanty of being inborh and utborh (Bain, ii, no. 148), that English lawyers could regard fee-farm as only a variety of socage tenure. The fact that corporate towns having infangthef and paying a farm were really fee-farm baronies seems to have escaped notice, though the cases of London and the Cinque Ports remain to enlighten us. ^ Plac. de Quo Warr. p. 119 ; Testa de Nevill, ii. 697. 3 Domesday Book, i. 298 b, 328, 331 ; Plac. de Quo Warr. p. 199.
- Northumberland Assize Rolls, p. 357.
^ Plac. de Quo Warr. pp. 112 ff., 588 ff.
- e. g. so late as 1840 the county court of Northumberland had no jurisdiction
in the barony of Alnwick (Returns of Courts of Requests, d:c. ; Accounts and Papers (1840), no. xli).
