The court leet and the vestry-meeting.

The old township-assembly partially survived in the Court Baron, Court Leet, and Customary Court of the Manor; and in these courts the arrangements for the common husbandry were determined.

Fro' heawrs to daysa dhreary length Fro' days to weeks one idle stons, An' slowly sinks fro' pride an' strength To weeny heart an' wakely honds; An' still one hopes, an' ever tries To think 'at better days mun come; Bo' th' sun may set, an' th' sun may rise, No sthreak o' leet one finds a-whoam.

" "That they do; yet there they must mingle with leet-men and indented slaves whose terms have expired," and Hugh heaved a sigh and dug his boot heel into the ground, adding, "It was not a merry day for old England when they struck off the king's head.

The leet-men, or tenants holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent, were not only destitute of political franchises, but were adscripts to the soil: "Under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal," and it was added: "all children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations.

The leet-men, or tenants holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent, were not only destitute of political franchises, but were adscripts to the soil: "Under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal," and it was added: "all children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations.

The leet-men, or tenants holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent, were not only destitute of political franchises, but were adscripts to the soil: "Under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal," and it was added: "all children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations.

And thanne thei schullen dyggen and mynen so strongly, tille that thei fynden the zates, that Kyng Alisandre leet make of grete stones and passynge huge, wel symented and made stronge for the maystrie.

And when thei hadden seyd so, upon the gracyous trust of God and of hem, wee leet synge masse, and made every man to ben schryven and houseld: and thanne wee entreden 14 personnes; but at oure goynge out, wee weren but 9.

The record in the Corporation Leet book is interesting enough to quote: The King, then abydeng stille in the seide Priory, upon Mich'as even sent the clerke of his closet to the Churche of Sent Michel to make redy ther hys clossette, seying that the Kynge on Mich'as day wolde go on p'cession and also her ther hygh masse.

In 1496 an Order of Leet ordained that "all manner of persons that will have the bells to ring after the decease of any of their friends, shall pay for a peal ringing with all the bells, 2s.

In 1428 an Act of Leet ordered that no person should dye any wool or cloth with "a deceitful colour called Masters or Medleys brought into Coventry by a Frenchman."]

It is usual to present the Encroachments at a Court Leet held for the manor, and upon perambulating the manor, which is generally done every three or four years, these encroachments are thrown out again to the waste or common.

By Lewis Don Leet.

Their compact was thus in some sort an unconscious reproduction of the laws and customs of the old-time court-leet, profoundly modified to suit the peculiar needs of backwoods life, the intensely democratic temper of the pioneers and above all the military necessities of their existence.

Some people performed the ceremony by deputy; and parties went about from house to house in the evening collecting candles, one for each inmate, and offering their services to late or leet the witches, as the phrase ran.

I started at once with one American companion named Leet, taking twelve days' dog-food and provisions.

Mr. Leet, who acted as the Soyer of our campaign, was standing over me with a slice of bacon impaled on a bowie-knife in one hand, and a poker in the otherboth of which insignia of office he was brandishing furiously, with the intention of waking me up more effectually.

Mr. Leet was in high glee.

Our travelling companion, the postilion, had manifested for several days an inclination to shirk work and allow us to do all the road-breaking, while he followed comfortably in our tracks, and by this strategic manoeuvre had incurred Mr. Leet's most implacable hatred.

He had accordingly started off at midnight and was laboriously breaking a road up the steep mountain side through three feet of soft snow, relying upon Mr. Leet's promise that we would be along before sunrise.

Seeing that Leet and I were determined to cross the valley, our guide shrugged his shoulders expressively, as much as to say, "You will soon regret your haste," and we went on.

Our guide once more remonstrated with us upon the folly of going deliberately into such a storm as this evidently would be; but Leet laughed him to scorn, declaring in broken Russian that he had seen storms in the Sierra Nevadas to which this was not a circumstance"Bolshoi storms, you bet!"

But in five minutes more Mr. Leet himself was ready to admit that this storm on the Viliga would not compare unfavourably with anything of the kind that he had ever seen in California.

Seeing my situation, Leet slid to me the sharp iron-spiked oerstel, which is used to check the speed of a sledge in descending hills, and by digging this into the ice at short intervals I crept back to shore, only a short distance above the open water at the mouth of the river, into which my mittens had already gone.