[3] History of England, Appendix, I.
[4] The decision of this majority would seem to have been principally determined, if the party complained against denied the charge, by the method of compurgation, in which the oath of the defendant was sustained by that of a certain number of his neighbors, who thereby certified their confidence in him; or, if he could not produce compurgators, and dared to venture upon it, by a superstitious appeal to the ordeal.
[5] History of England, Appendix, II.
[6] We may observe that even at present, whether in England or America, though the depositaries of the legislative and executive authority (which in those times the king was) sit no longer openly and personally on the bench, it still remains no easy matter, in cases in which they take an interest, to obtain in either country a judicial decision contrary to the inclination of these two authorities.
[7] In the king’s absence—and the Anglo-Norman kings were often absent on visits to their continental dominions—this chief justiciary acted in all respects as the king’s substitute, no less in military than in civil affairs, those who held it being selected quite as much for warlike prowess as for judicial skill. Such was the case with Ranulphus de Granville, chief justiciary of Henry II., A. D. 1180-1191, whose treatise in Latin, On the Laws and Customs of the Kingdom of England, is the oldest book of the common law. He went with Richard I. on the third crusade, and was killed at the siege of Acre.
[8] It might rather be said, a scholastic art, in which forms and words became matters of much greater consideration than substantial justice, and in which technical rules were substituted for the exercise of the reasoning faculties.
[9] Not merely were these appeals introduced, but process was invented by which suits commenced in these local courts might, before they were finished, be removed into the king’s courts, by the writ of pone and others.
[10] Originally, and down to a comparatively recent period, the Inns of Court were real schools, “readers” or lecturers being appointed for the instruction of the students, who were only admitted to practice after a sharp examination. Now, the examination is a mere form, and the student seeks instruction where he pleases. Even the nominal term of study has been reduced to five, and in some cases to three years.
[11] This distinction between attorneys and barristers, though still in full vogue in England and in several of the British colonies, is not recognized in the United States, where, indeed, it never had but a feeble and transient existence.
[12] Down to the period of the reformation the abbots of the greater monasteries sat also in this house.