provisions for robbers, or travelled by night and
could not give an account of themselves. Such
duties these half-dozen leading men were then
sworn to discharge. Then, there were called
together the serjeants and bailiffs of hundreds,
who named each from his own hundred four
knights, and these elected from each hundred
twelve more knights, or free and lawful men if
knights could not be found, as a jury that was
to return, in answer to a string of questions,
all particulars of internal administration. In
this respect, therefore, the judges in eyre were
not judges, but collectors of information for
the use of government. The trials were of two
sorts. In one, there was an individual accuser;
in the other, there was common report. If
there were an individual accuser, the proceeding
was called an appeal, and the trial was generally
by battle. Preliminary inquiries had to be met
by the appellant, and if the evidence of crime
were beyond all doubt, the accused was denied
his right of battle, and immediately executed.
The right of appeal to force was not abolished,
during long practical disuse, until the year
eighteen 'nineteen, when, in the case of
Ashford v. Thornton, the appellee "waged his
body," and threw down his glove in
Westminster Hall: the court ruling that he had a
right to do so. If, in the old law court, the
accusation were by common report from the
jury of the hundred, the judge first satisfied
himself of the good faith and discretion of the
jury, and then entrusted to that jury, or to
another, the decision of the case by sworn opinion
of report and witness to each other, with or without
other evidence. The charge given to the
jury was, "A. B., here present, accused of the
death of C. D., denies the death and the whole
charge, and puts himself for good and evil on
your voices." The charge now given is, "A. B,
stands indicted for the wilful murder of C. D.
To this indictment he has pleaded not guilty.
Your charge is to say whether he is guilty or
not, and hearken to the evidence." To avoid
action of private malice the accused had liberty
to challenge jurors, and even eventually to
refuse to be tried by a particular judge.

"We are taking this narrative from an historical
sketch, that forms part of a new and very thoughtful
book on the spirit of English criminal law
(A General View of the Criminal Law of
England) by the Recorder of Newark-on-Trent, Mr.
James Fitzjames Stephen.

The jury, then, were not originally hearers of
evidence, but formed an inquest of men
personally acquainted with the matter in hand, who
swore to it as informants of the judge. The
system was common in Normandy as well as
in England, and applied not only to the trial of
offences, but to the collection of revenue, and
every other branch of the executive government.
The inquest by jury was held originally for the
advantage of the sovereign; but incorporated
bodies of Englishmen soon learn to act with
independence, and the jury system thus became
a restraint on undue exercise of the prerogative.
The king, who looked to be informed of
his rights by the people, was checked in the
enforcement of oppressive claims. The official
witnesses of a rude age thus gradually became
judges informed by witnesses; and the judges,
who at first were chiefly collectors and registrars
of the information furnished by juries, would
then find use for their knowledge of law in
superintending the admissibility of evidence and
summing up its effect. The grand jury, which
acted for the whole county, and whose business
was to accuse and not to try, was separated
from the petty jury, in the reign of Edward the
Third. Thus the present system of trial by
grand jury, judge, petty jury, and witnesses, was
gradually constructed between the thirteenth
and fifteenth centuries.

For the catching of criminals, the arrangements
used to be very elaborate. The oldest
institution for the purpose was the frank-pledge,
or joint responsibility of a certain number of
persons for the offence of any one among them.
Every one had to be a member of some frank-
pledge. Watch and ward on the king's highway
was kept by four men summoned from
every hide in the hundred, under command of
the ward-reeve, who was paid by grant of his
own land free of taxation, but was personally
liable for negligence, and was fined if a robber
escaped with his prey. Frank-pledge was an
Anglo-Saxon institution strongly maintained by
the Normans. Statutes of Edward the First
further provided that each hundred should be
answerable for robberies; that the gates of all
great towns should be shut from sunset to
sunrise; that highways were to be cleared of
brushwood for a breadth of two hundred feet on each
side; that there should be fortnightly inquiry by
the bailiffs for suspicious persons; that every
man was to keep arms and show them twice a
year to appointed viewers; and that whenever a
crime was committed, hue and cry was to be
raised and followed immediately by all persons
bound to do so, to the borders of their bailiwick.
The sheriff was at the head of the power of the
county (posse comitatus), his duty was to keep
the peace, to follow the hue and cry himself, or
by his bailiffs, and to seize offenders. The
coroner was, on honest information, to go to the
places where lay any slain, or suddenly dead or
wounded, or where houses were broken, or where
treasure was said to be found, "and shall forthwith
command four of the next towns, or five or
six, to appear before him in such a place; and
when they are come hither, the coroner, upon
the oath of them, shall inquire——" This whole
system, although never formally superseded, has
in its original form become practically obsolete.

Hardly anything has been added to the law
for detection of crimes, though, a few things
have been taken away from it. The Tudors
and Stuarts tried innovations, especially by
introducing the custom of examination by torture,
but they failed to establish them. The practice
of not examining a prisoner's witnesses, or not
examining them on oath, was formally abolished;
the rule that denied counsel to persons accused
of felony or treason, was abolished as to treason