danish courts of appeal moned to the district or the provincial court and had refused to produce a fine or compurgators imposed by the court. If the plaintiff did not follow this procedure, he was liable for fines to the king and the defendant. In other words, the king was compensated for refusing a plaintiff at the royal court and instead referring him to one of the other courts, if he had not already appeared before them. Thus according to the coronation charter of 1282 and later charters, a case had to be completed at one of the ordinary courts before the king was allowed to become involved.18 Thus, the king used king’s letters and passed sentences with a certain degree of avidity since King Eric’s magnates with the coronation charter wished to limit the king’s clear competition to the established system of horizontal courts.19 The first instance of a clear sequence of courts – which appears to provide the possibility of appealing the decision of one court to another – is found in a decision from a provincial court in 1302 in which the case had been “appealed to Zealand’s provincial court since good men from the same district pursued this appeal with the consent of both [parties]”. An amendment to the Law of Jutland, which date from the same period, even provide the possibility for the culprit to appeal a sentence in semisevere cases to the king if the appeal was made at the same session that passed the sentence. A decade later, other sources make it clear that provincial courts were above district courts. In the coronation charter of 1320, it was made clear to (or by) King Christopher II that a case went from the district court to the provincial court and from thence to the king before appearing in the final instance before the annual Danehof. The Danehof is mentioned for the first time in 1282 when King Eric VKlipping agreed in his coronation charter to hold an annual “parliament calledhof [court]” with the participation of “the best men of the realm.” In this court the king and the major land owing men of the realm engaged in legal activity and also functioned as the highest court of the country so that this now became the forum in which the king defended his legal interests. Therefore, it was also often in connection with the Danehof 18 Andersen, Per 2011 pp. 223-224. 19 Andersen, Per 2005 pp. 139-145. 254
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