SOME ANCIENT COURTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 242, 12 September 1932, Page 8

SOME ANCIENT COURTS.

CEREMONIES THAT SURVIVE,

THOUSAND YEARS OF HISTORY,

Tho Admiral of the Medway “swarmed” aboard a barge in the middle of the river at Rochester recently to preside over the Medway Court of Admiralty (states an English paper). Ashore lie is tho Mayor of Rochester, Mr George Jenner, but once afloat he becomes a maritime dignitary and decides disputes about oysters and other fishy things with true nautical aplomb. This court prides itself on 200 years of history, but beside somo of Britain’s ancient courts it is a youngster. Not long after King Harold fell beneath the rain of Norman arrows at Hastings the Court of Arches was sitting. It is the premier ecclesiastical tribunal of England, and its past goes back to the beginning of Britain’s history. In modern days of toil and bustle it still meets and considers the laws of the Church with all the solemnity of its 1000 years of history. A great silver mace is borne in state before Sir Lewis Dibdin, the veteran Dean of the Arches, as lie enters Church House, Westminster, just as it was before the Deans of other days as they went to sit in judgment in the church of St. Mary of the Arches, destroyed in the Great Fire of London.

In the heart of the New Forest meets the Court of New Forest Vprderers and chooses, with old ceremonial, tho verderers for each year. They talk of grazing rights and other affairs of the forest, and hold undisputed sway. The Agister, wearing his coat of Lincoln Green, cries aloud, “Oyez! Oyez!” and declares the court open with the same formula that tho Agister has used for 900 years. The old Court Leet is a tribunal which tradition says was founded by King Alfred. Manorial rights of all kinds are within their jurisdiction, and many of them also have the pleasant task of ale-tasting to make sure that the local brew is just as good as it used to be. AVithin recent vears such courts have been held at Hast Hendred, in Kent, Penrith in Cumberland and Hungerford in Berkshire.