But a much more difficult case comes before us at Warwick[397]. We first hear of the town houses that are held by great men as parts of their manors, and then we hear that 'besides these houses there are in the borough nineteen burgesses who have nineteen houses with sake and soke and all customs.' Now we can not easily believe that the burgess's house is a jurisdictional area, or that in exacting a mulct from one who commits a crime in that house the burgess will be playing the magistrate or exercising a right to do justice or take the profits of justice by virtue of a grant made to him by the king. Rather we are likely to see here a relic of the ancient 'house-peace[398].' If you commit an act of violence in a man's house, whatever you may have to pay to the person whom you strike and to the king, you will also have to make amends to the owner of the house, even though he be but a ceorl or a boor, for you have broken his peace[399]. The right of the burgess to exact a mulct from one who has shed blood or committed adultery within his walls may in truth be a right of this kind, and yet, like other rights to other mulcts, it is now conceived as an emanation of sake and soke. If in the eleventh century we hear but little of this householder's right, may this not be because the householder has surrendered it to his lord, or the lord has usurped it from the householder, and thus it has gone to swell the mass of the lord's jurisdictional rights? At Broughton in Huntingdonshire the Abbot of Ramsey has a manor with some sokemen upon it 'and these sokemen say that they used to have legerwite (fornication-fine), bloodwite and larceny up to fourpence, and above fourpence the Abbot had the forfeiture of larceny[400].' Various interpretations may be set upon this difficult passage. We may fashion for ourselves a village court (though there are but ten sokemen) and suppose that the commune of sokemen enjoyed the smaller fines incurred by any of its members. But we are inclined to connect this entry with those relating to Wallingford and to Warwick and to believe that each sokeman has enjoyed a right to exact a sum of money for the breach of his peace. The law does not clearly mark off the right of the injured housefather from the right of the offended magistrate. How could it do so? If you commit an act of violence you must pay a wite to the king. Why so? Because you have wronged the king by breaking his peace and he requires 'amends' from you. With this thought in our minds we may now approach an obscure problem.