Note 726 — MAGNA CARTA. (continued 4)

See Bigelow, Hist. of Procedure, 78. Glanvill, read between the lines, contains admissions which support this view. Friend of prerogative as he was, he shows consciousness of a distinction between the proper and improper use of the royal jurisdiction. Thus in I. c. 3, he speaks of the king’s courts as normally dealing with “pleas of baronies” (i.e. litigations concerning Crown fiefs); in I. c. 5, he speaks of what he evidently considers an abnormal expansion of this jurisdiction to any plea anent a free tenement or fief, if the Crown so desired,—that is, the Crown claimed an option, in circumstances admitted to be abnormal, of deciding pleas as to fiefs held under mesne lords. This distinction is identical with that on which the present chapter of Magna Carta is based.