Of anything that could be called the constitution of the boroughs, next to nothing can we learn. We may take it that in most cases the king's farmer was the sheriff of the shire; in some few cases, as for example at Hereford, the reeve of the borough may have been directly accountable to the king[807]. We know no proof that in any case the reeve was an elected officer. Probably in each borough a court was held which was a court for the borough; probably it was, at least as a general rule, co-ordinate with a hundred court, and indeed at starting the borough seems to be regarded as a vill which is also a hundred[808]. The action of this court, however, like the action of other hundred courts, must as time went on have been hampered by the growth of seignorial justice. The sake and soke which a lord might have over his men and over his lands were certainly not excluded by the borough walls. He had sometimes been expressly told that he might enjoy these rights 'within borough and without borough.' It is difficult for us to realize the exact meaning that 'sake and soke' would bear when ascribed to a prelate or thegn who had but two or three houses within the town. Perhaps in such cases the town houses were for jurisdictional purposes deemed to be situate within some rural manor of their lord. But in a borough a lord might have a compact group of tenants quite large enough to form a petty court. In such a case the borough court would have the seignorial courts as rivals, and many a dispute would there be. At Lincoln one Tochi had a hall which undoubtedly was free 'from all custom'; but he had also thirty houses over which the king had toll and forfeiture. So the burgesses swore; but a certain priest was ready to prove by ordeal that they swore falsely[809]. In these cases the lord's territory would appear in later times as a little 'liberty' lying within the borough walls. The middle ages were far spent before such liberties had become mere petty nuisances[810]. In the old cathedral towns, such as Canterbury and Winchester, the bishop's jurisdictional powers and immunities were serious affairs, for the bishop's tenants were numerous[811]. Nevertheless, in the great and ancient boroughs, the boroughs which stand out as types and models, there was from a very remote time a court, a borough-moot or portman-moot, which was not seignorial, a court which was a unit in a national system of courts.