WHEN Chief Justice Mettingham gave judgment in Michaelmas term 1300 in favour of Ralph de Frecheville and against the dean and chapter of Southwell after the verdict of a grand assize (a jury of twelve local knights) in a long-running action about the advowson of the Nottinghamshire church of Bonney, it was (as we learn from three surviving independent reports of what was actually said in court) that Ralph was to retain the advowson ‘to himself and his heirs quit of the chapter and their successors to the end of time (a remenaunt de mond)’. A similar form of words was also used by William of Brunton, one of the justices of the 1302 Cornish eyre, in his final judgment in an action of right for land, again after the verdict of a grand assize in favour of the existing tenant. The official plea roll enrolment of the first of these cases uses only the rather less colourful form of words, that ‘Ralph … is to hold the said advowson to himself and his heirs quit of the said chapter and their succcessors in perpetuity’, but even these words clearly also stress the finality of the judgment being given. A similarly definitive form of words seems also to have been used in the judgment given in the Common Bench in 1287 in an action of right claiming the Suffolk manors of Semer and Groton brought by John of Creake and his two fellow-coheirs against the abbot of Bury St Edmunds, after the victory of the demandants’ champion in judicial combat (trial by battle). This awarded the manors to the claimants ‘to hold to themselves and their heirs quit of the said abbot and his successors in perpetuity’. Again these are the words of the enrolment. If we also possessed a report of the words spoken by the presiding justice in court, we might well discover that he had used a similar form of words to those used by Mettingham and Brunton.

Such words were, however, by no means the common currency of judgments. They were a distinctive feature of actions of right, legal actions in which the grand assize or trial by battle were the methods of proof, and in which legal procedure allowed multiple possibilities of delay.