Borough Reeve - Law Dictionary Search Results

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Borough-reeve

Borough-reeve, the chief municipal officer in towns unincorporated before the Municipal Corporations Act, 5 & 6 Wm. 4, c. 76....

Court-leet. [Coke says leet is a Saxon word, and comes from the verb gelathian, or gelethian (g being added euphoni' gratia), i.e., convenire, to assemble together, unde conventus, 4 Inst. 261. For other opinions as to the derivation of the word, see Lex Man. 131; Ritson on Courts-leet; and Scriv. On Copyholds.] This court is expressly kept up by s. 40 of the Sheriffs Act, 1887, though for all but formal purposes it has long since fallen into desuetude, and there is still an annual Court-leet of the Manor and Liberty of Savoy which meets at St. Clement Danes Vestry Hall, the High Steward of the Manor presiding, a jury being empannelled one month aftr Easter and serving for a year from that date, the court being held 'for the purpose of preventing small offences in the nature of a common nuisance,' and still having 'power to impose fines for certain offenes, such the stopping up of ways': Solicitor's Journal,Vol. 49, p. 493.The Court-leet is a court of record appointed to be held once a...

Westminster the First, Statute of

Westminster the First, Statute of (3 Edw. 1, AD 1275). This statute, which deserves the name of a Code rather than an Act, is divided into fifty-one chapters. Without extending the exemption of churchmen from civil jurisdiction, it protects the property of the Church from the violence and spoliation of the king and the nobles, and provides for freedom of popular elections, because sheriffs, coroners, and conservators of the peace were still chosen by the freeholders in the county Court, and attempts had been made to influence the election of knights of the shire, from the time when they were instituted. It contains a declaration to enforce the enactment of Magna Charta against excessive fines, which might operate as perpetual imprisonment; enumerates and corrects the abuses of tenures, particularly as to marriage of wards; regulates the levying of tolls, which were imposed arbitrarily by the barons, and by cities and boroughs; corrects and retrains the power of the king's escheator and...

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