Sluice Court

The government of the Nieuwlanden in every matter touching water, sitting on a barge moored at the work in dispute. Its bench is rostered from frontage-holders of each parish; it decides obligations rather than rights and orders physical remedies before money.

The body of landholders behind the Nieuwlanden banks that governs their water, sitting in a barge at the lock it is arguing about. It can order work, levy for it, enter any man's ground and sell it if he will not pay. The dike court of the Nieuwlanden, which sits in the working season to hear disputed charges on frontage behind a dike.

Named with it

• Sluice Justice Hendrik Loos

Ties

• pays the Last-bank tower watch
• shares authority with town councils, parishes and the piling gangs

At the table

Three princes tried to take it over and each found the banks stopped being mended. The sluice levy pays the men in the last-bank towers under a heading that does not name the duty. Judgement is given on the spot with no reserved decision; appeal lies to a joint sitting of neighbouring courts. Any party may recuse a bench member twice without reason. It will enter a frontage charge against a company's employer unasked, and a man absent from where the bell-duty roster places him has committed the one offence it will not settle with a fine. A standard three-week near-world commission is attending its hearings and the frontage inspection; the risk is idle waiting in a town that dislikes the party.