The Lawless Court, formally the King's Court of the Manor of King's Hill, was an English court that began meeting in Kings Hill,

Rochford Rochford is a town in Essex, England, north of Southend-on-Sea, from London and from Chelmsford, the county town. At the 2011 census, the Civil parishes in England, civil parish, which includes the town and London Southend Airport, had a popu ...

, so called because of the "lawless" time at which it met (midnight). According to tradition, the court was first created some time before 1661, after the Lord of the Manor of King's Hill was woken by a cock crowing, to discover a group of his

vassal A vassal or liege subject is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. While the subordinate party is called a vassal, the dominant party is called a suzerain. W ...

s planning to murder him. Interrupting them, he convicted them of treason, for which their lands would be forfeit. As an act of clemency, he declared that they would be allowed to keep their lands in a state of "shameful service". Each year, the day the plot was discovered (the Wednesday after

Old Michaelmas Day Michaelmas ( ; also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a Christian festival observed in some Western liturgical calendars on 29 September, ...

), the tenants were to assemble at midnight where the plot was discovered, where the Lord's Steward would whisper out their names as quietly as possible. Those tenants who did not answer to their name would be fined double rent for every hour they failed to do so. The tenants were then obliged to wait there until a cock crowed three times, at which point they were dismissed. The names of those tenants who answered were entered by the Steward with a piece of

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...

, ink being forbidden; in addition, no candles were allowed, with only natural light being permitted. For its strange procedure, the Court gained a variety of names; most commonly the "Lawless Court", but also "The Whispering Court" and "The Court of Cockcrowing". The Court continued without fail until the 19th century, although it became a tradition only; no prosecutions or litigation ever took place in it, and it is sometimes formally known as the "Curia Sine Lege", or "court without a

leet Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. ...

-day". In later years there were many shortcuts in the court's procedure; most tenants simply paid their double rent at the Steward's office in the morning, preferring this to standing around in the damp, and a local man was employed to make the noise of a cock crowing after the court's business had been concluded.Kenny (1905) p.533

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Bibliography

* *{{cite book, last=Tayler, first=Thomas, title=The law glossary: being a selection of the Greek, Latin, Saxon, French, Norman, and Italian sentences, phrases, and maxims, url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924022836336, editor=4th, publisher=Lewis & Blood, year=1855, oclc=14002394 Former courts and tribunals in England and Wales Courts and tribunals established in the 17th century Courts and tribunals disestablished in the 19th century Rochford District