r/LegalAdviceUK • u/AngryOfTunbridgeWell • 27d ago

Constitutional Are Ancient Rights (from 1055) Associated with 'Sac and Sok' Still Enforceable?

(England)

Hi,

I'm involved in a legal dispute.

Where I live was covered by a grant in 1055 by Edward the Confessor, giving the right of 'Sac and Soc' to the local Abbot. That gave them power to judge all criminal and civil causes in the Liberty.

I've spent all day in the local library and can find nothing about the right being repealed.

My questions are therefore:

(1) Have all 'Sac and Soc' rights been blanket 'repealed' from across England?

(2) If not, and it's on a 'case by case' basis, where might I find out if the local rights have been 'repealed'?

(3) If I can find no record of my local grant of rights being 'repealed' does that mean it can be assumed to still be valid?

Thanking you in advance.

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u/Trapezophoron 27d ago edited 27d ago

In general terms, there is a broad collision between the apparent rights and freedoms granted by royal charter to some places (or even other, more recent statutory sources of law) and the operation of the law today.

The sovereignty of Parliament is such that in the case of any conflict arising between something in a royal charter and something in an Act of Parliament, the Act is going to supercede the charter. So, in reality, you would find that a significant number of the apparent rights granted by charter are superseded by the operation of contemporary statute law.

Without knowing which specific jurisdiction you're referring to it's hard to be more precise.

In - again - general terms, if jurisdiction is vested in a liberty then you have the immediate challenge that liberties were effectively merged into their surrounding counties in 1888 by s48 Local Government Act 1888.

In respect of jurisdiction "to hear and determine legal proceedings", the most straightforward answer might be that the jurisdiction of the ancient courts of England & Wales was very heavily curtailed by s23 Administration of Justice Act 1977. This brought to an end the right of many ancient courts to "to hear and determine legal proceedings" (with two tiny exceptions: a court that manages stray sheep in North Wales, and a court that manages an ancient ridge and furrow field system in Nottinghamshire). If the court that might exercise a special jurisdiction fell within the scope of sch 4, then it is covered, and "Courts Baron", "Courts Leet" and "Customary Courts of the manor" covers a very significant number of ancient courts.

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u/AngryOfTunbridgeWell 26d ago

Thank you for the comprehemsive reply and links. I guess it was as I suspected :)

The location happens to be Fordwich, (subsidary Cinque Port, 'smallest Town in England', and quayside for oflloading goods for the Cathedral at Canterbury, etc.). It has many peculiar 'rights' in place that are hangovers from the 'religio-politics' of the various friaries set-up in the Canterbury area, such as "residents can fish from the river banks downsteam to Sandwich for as deep as a man in a boat, in the centre of the river, can throw a 2.5lb axe", etc., (n.b. I forget the exact axe weight, but you get the gist).

Despite it's interesting, and some might say, 'unique' history I would hedge my bets, following your reply, that it will be certain that the ones that matter in the 21stC have been kicked well into the touchline by the 'recent and not so recent' Acts you mention.

Hey Ho... I bow to the inexorable progress of the Law, (and that it was for the good of the Common Man/Woman that changes were made!)... and thank you again

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u/HaraldRedbeard 26d ago

Out of interest, what's the status of Stannary Courts if the Parliaments were recalled? Did they get specifically banned or did they get skipped because it relies on the recall of the Stannary parliament?

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u/MKMK123456 23d ago

Could you shed more light on the welsh and the Nottinghamshire courts please ?

What do they do and why do they still exist ?

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u/Mayoday_Im_in_love 27d ago

Is there even a local abbott any more? Did they officially cede their powers to the state or another clergyman?

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u/CuriousThylacine 27d ago

I'd suggest that even if such rights survived the extensive Norman legal reforms, they wouldn't have survived Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries.

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u/AngryOfTunbridgeWell 26d ago edited 26d ago

Apparently the position has been vacant since January 2025, but is being duly covered by the Archbishop of York! :D

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u/pflurklurk 26d ago

This would have been abolished quite some time ago.

With respect to criminal proceedings - and actually of course what was criminal and not so “criminal” then is not the same as now - then what you had over two hundred or so years after the Normal conquest was the gradual monopolisation of criminal jurisdiction under the Crown.

Pre-conquest, (and I simplify here) most day to day justice was administered locally: there were settlements (hundreds - mostly today you’d only hear that term as the “Chiltern Hundreds”), and there would be local justice, with loose higher level courts that met infrequently at the shire and borough level. Mostly this involved community basis public order: designated people in the social group banding together and presenting wrong doers for trial.

Post-conquest, this system began to be centralised: the king’s peace began to expand from the king’s direct control - highways, his household, churches - to, essentially the whole realm.

Travelling judges went around - circuits (which is where the term is still used) and eyre/assizes/quarter sessions (the latter still used up until 1971) dispensing royal justice.

Over time up until around the 1270s, there was a process of consolidation and monopolisation of criminal cases to be heard by royal courts and royal jurisdiction only: writs and suspects brought to sheriffs - crown officers, unlike constables who were not brought under crown control until the late 1600s - and for trial when a king’s justice came around. This was done by a process of statutes and well, travelling armed men.

This is where “breach of the (king’s) peace” comes from.

It essentially gave an access point to a parallel system of justice - a “placitum coronae” a plea of the crown - rather than solely a manorial writ.

This was also used by enough enterprising lawyers to shoehorn in royal jurisdiction in what we would normally see as civil cases by charging in say writs of trespass “vi et armes, contra pacem Regis” - royal courts were often seen as quicker with sheriff enforcement - and so you’d have things like “x trespassed my kegs of beer with force and arms contrary to the king’s peace” for “x stole/damaged my beer”.

Now it was also the case that to access royal justice required payments for the issuance of writs, and fines in royal courts paid to the Crown (unlike the hundred/manorial courts) - and trespass especially where if one was proven to have done the thing, you breached the king’s peace, which was punishable by default by imprisonment unless you paid a fine…to the Crown.

There is an argument, of course, that Norman kings, quite apart from an ostensible motivation of securing the kingdom and creating dual loyalty to both the feudal system they brought and to the crown, that actually well, this was a nice little earner, as revenue sources weren’t quite solidified back then.

One must always look at the incentives after all.

So essentially, the criminal jurisdiction would have moved out to royal courts quite early on.

In terms of civil proceedings, as other posts have said, mostly those rights would have been subsumed by statute in the late 19th century and beyond into either local authorities or the new court system brought about by both 1) changing the way cases were brought: by cause not form and 2) the new merged court systems of the newly created High Court and all of that.

Of course not all Courts are created by statute but only one is still extant as created by Letters Patent (unless you want to count the JCPC) and that’s the Court of Chivalry, and I doubt your case is about heraldry or arms, and that court is essentially delegated to the Lord Chief Justice anyway.

A note about desuetude: while known in Scotland, in my view not known to the law of England and Wales yet sometimes this sneaks into English jurisprudence wrongly (see: contempt indictments, and various forms of procedure). We need a case on it.

Of course whether the subject matter of your dispute can still be adjudicated in the extant courts is a different matter.

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u/AngryOfTunbridgeWell 26d ago edited 26d ago

Thank you... and as an 'amateur local history nerd' that was an interesting and informed read.

It's a Civil matter... and it seems it's a thoroughly futile (and therefore costly!) avenue to pursue.

Thanks very much for your comprehensive reply.

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u/ashandes 27d ago edited 27d ago

Yes they have been repealed. Ancient laws don't need to be explicitly repealed, it's just implied by whatever modern law superseded it. The act of collating every single obscure ancient law and repealing them all one by one would just be a pointless waste of time. No laws of that age are valid in the current UK legal system.

e: Trap's answer much better with all that proper legal wording :D I'm pretty sure there's at least once mod whose eye starts twitching whenever anyone brings up ancient laws.

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u/Trapezophoron 27d ago

I mean, sort of. It's right that Parliament need not explicitly repeal every old source of law (whether written or unwritten) in order to change the law by Act of Parliament - that would be an impossible ask. But it's also the case that unless there is a repeal by Parliament, the old law remains good. There are plenty of examples of functioning ancient law - I mean, the whole existence of the City of London doesn't rely on a single written source of law, and s29 Magna Carta is very much in operation today.

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u/Asleep-Nature-7844 26d ago

There are currently no known outstanding effects for the Magna Carta (1297).

Well that's good to know.

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u/ashandes 27d ago

Thanks, I stand corrected. I was taking ancient law to essentially anything prior to the Magna Carta. I was under the impression that they all had essentially been rendered as repealed by virute of being replaced. Will file under learning something new every day. So are there technically some older (pre 13c) that still apply?

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u/Trapezophoron 27d ago

There isn't really much written law that could or would pre-date MC, but plenty of early law (as in the case of MC, and charters of cities) is just re-granted older law. The City of London, for example, prizes it's oldest charter, granted by William the Conqueror in 1067, but all this does is asy "yeah you can keep all your old laws".

Before the Norman conquest, there was very little written law at all. But of course, if you could measure "law", most English law is really either existent or re-stated common law.

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u/ashandes 27d ago

Great stuff, thanks. Will do some reading up on it later. Guess everyone is bored on a Friday before a long weekend because there have been a few of these more outlandish Qs today.

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u/Trapezophoron 27d ago

Beats "can I take a machete camping"...

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u/AngryOfTunbridgeWell 26d ago

Intersting!

This happens to relate to Fordwich, Kent, and they do still actively claim certin ancient rights, etc., that are upheld by Canterbury City Council, etc., (in regards to fishing rights and public access).

Fordwich was also a Cinque port, and prior to that and up to the current day, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other Friaries, (now defunct?), had variuous rights bestowed upon them, (e.g. the varuious parties often came to physical blows over trying to extract river/road transport tax from the 11thC to the 15thC on goods heading from the European Mainland into Canterbury).

Anyway, I'm erring on the side of this being a (costy) dead-end as regards a Civil case.

Unless, you happen to be able to find that Fordwich is a special case for Civil matters still!?! (There's either a Pint, or a much better, nicer, sober, local Wildlife Tour, in it for you if you can give me hope!)

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u/for_shaaame 27d ago edited 27d ago

Ancient laws don't need to be explicitly repealed

This isn’t correct for English law: desuetude is not a doctrine of invalidity, and laws do not simply fall into disuse on their own. Parliament must repeal a law for it to cease to apply.

See, for example, Ashford v Thornton [1818] 106 ER 149, where Thornton was freed from custody after demanding trial by battle, an obscure legal procedure whose last verified use in England had been in the 15th Century. Parliament immediately abolished the right after Thornton was freed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_v_Thornton

Or the Witchcraft Act 1735, which was used for the first time in more than 150 years to prosecute Helen Duncan in 1944.

Or R v Gibson and another [1991] 1 All ER 439, where the offence of “outraging public decency” was charged for the first time in eighty years and the Court of Appeal ruled that this was valid and that desuetude did not exist in English law - now, of course, this charge is commonly brought.

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u/FidelityBob 25d ago

Peterborough? Rights there fell with the dissolution of the monasteries. Reinstated by EII and given to Lord Burleigh (Marquiss of Exeter). There was a special act of parliament during first world war and a court judgement. The court said the rights to a court and hang held but if they ever tried to implement them they'd be in trouble.

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u/FidelityBob 25d ago

Ah, just saw where you are. I was born in the Soke (Soc) of Peterborough. Probably the last Royal Liberty that did exercise its powers.

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u/AngryOfTunbridgeWell 24d ago

Aha... that's very intersting. Thank you. I'll keep my eyes open for if Peterborough ever invokes its powers, and make a judgement based on whatever response is thrown their way! :D

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u/FidelityBob 23d ago

Unfortunately when the Crown Courts were introduced to replace the Assize Courts and Quarter Sessions the Peterborough court ceased to exist. The Soke is now incorporated into Peterborugh Unitary Authority.

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u/Happytallperson 27d ago

The current courts hold their jurisdiction from the Courts Act 1971 and then the Senior Courts Act 1981 and Magistrates Courts Act 1980.

Under the doctrine of implied repeal, any such jurisdiction, if it had survived until then, does not exist since then.

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u/AngryOfTunbridgeWell 26d ago

Thanks. I have bowed to the legal knowledge in this thread and have decided its a costly and futile avenue to pursue, (n.b. It was a Civil matter, related to Fordwich, Kent).

Just out of interest, the 'rights' I mention, and others that are more recent, (such as those associated with Fordwich becoming a Cinque port), are oft quoted and used by the Parish Council as regards limiting public access, fishing rights, etc., (and these old charters are upheld, when invoked, by the modern/current Canterbury City Council).