294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



summon the people of the hundred in which the dispute arose or the 

 crime was committed. They were to be of the vicinage or neighbor- 

 hood of tlie parties. It was necessary that they should know some- 

 thing of the matters in dispute, or the persons accused. They were 

 to decide of their own knowledge. Witnesses in the modern sense 

 were unknown. The parties stated their grievance in the presence of 

 this rude assemblage, which, by a species of acclamation, or prepon- 

 derance of lung-power, which often terminated in an appeal to brute 

 force, determined the question in issue. 



Among the northern tribes something more nearly approaching to 

 a court and jury is said to have existed, but among the Anglo-Saxons 

 judicial forms were of the rudest possible description. By a law of 

 Ethelred twelve men with the sheriff were to go out and discover all 

 who had committed offenses and accuse them. Later grew the prac- 

 tice, introduced by the clergy from the canon law, of swearing the 

 witnesses (as the jury were termed), and of requiring sworn evidence 

 in all cases, both civil and criminal. And by the laws of Edgar it was 

 provided that in every hundred there should be twelve sworn men to 

 be appointed as witnesses, some of whom were to witness every trans- 

 action, that they might be afterward called to decide concerning it. 

 The refinements of the ecclesiastical law, and the clergy, who only 

 could read and write, did much to soften the asperities and barbarities 

 of the customs which were in process of time molded into the com- 

 mon law of the country. 



The modern jury is no more than the tumultuous assembly of the 

 Anglo-Saxons molded into judicial form by the introduction of sworn 

 evidence, by the separation of the grand and petty juries, and by the 

 establishment of the number twelve — a number common for many 

 purposes among the northern tribes of Europe. In its early stages 

 it had no reference to a dread of monarchical aggression. Witness the 

 fact that Alfred caused forty-four justices to be hanged in one year 

 for delivering false judgments and sentences contrary to the verdict 

 of the jury. From this time the jurisprudence of England rapidly 

 improved. Under the Normans, who succeeded, the jury system 

 showed marked signs of development. In the reign of William II 

 occurred the first instance of twelve men sworn to render a verdict 

 in anything like the modern sense. That was in a cause between the 

 Bishop of Rochester and the sheriff. The jurors, awed by the in- 

 fluence of the sheriff, decided in his favor, which the bishop suspect- 

 ing, he commanded them to choose twelve men who should confirm it 

 on oath. In this we see the first rudiments of the petty jury. 



Another cause which led to the differentiation of the petty jury from 

 the general body of jurors (or witnesses) was what is known in Eng- 

 lish law as the presentment of Englishry. By a law of the Norman 

 kings, the people of the hundred in which a murder was committed 

 were bound to discover the murderer or pay a fine, unless they proved 



