Taxation was controlled in the same manner by the voice of those who were most liable to oppression. * * A jury was impaneled to adjudge the proportion due to the sovereign; and this course was not essentially varied, even after the right of granting aids to the crown was fully acknowledged to be vested in the parliament of the realm. The people taxed themselves; and the collection of the grants was checked and controlled, and, perhaps, in many instances evaded, by these virtual representatives of the community.
The principle of the jury was, therefore, not confined to its mere application as a mode of trying contested facts, whether in civil or criminal cases; and, both in its form and in its consequences, it had a very material influence upon the general constitution of the realm. * *The main-spring of the machinery of remedial justice existed in the franchise of the lower and lowest orders of the political hierarchy. Without the suffrage of the yeoman, the burgess, and the churl, the sovereign could not exercise the most important and most essential function of royalty; from them he received the power of life and death; he could not wield the sword of justice until the humblest of his subjects placed the weapon in his hand." 1 Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English Constitution, 274 7.
Coke says,
"The court of the county is no court of record, [19] and the suitors are the judges thereof." 4 Inst.) 266.
Also, "The court of the Hundred is no court of record, and the suitors be thereof judges." 4 Inst., 267.
Also, "The court-baron is a court incident to every manor, and is not of record, and the suitors be thereof judges." 4 Inst., 268.
Also, "The court of ancient demesne is in the nature of a court-baron, wherein the suitors are judges, and is no court of record." 4 Inst., 269.
Millar says,
"Some authors have thought that jurymen were originally compurgators, called by a defendant to swear that they believed him innocent of the facts with which he was charged. . . But . . . compurgators were merely witnesses; jurymen were, in reality, judges. The former were called to confirm the oath of the party by swearing, according to their belief, that he had told the truth, (in his oath of purgation;) the latter were appointed to try, by witnesses, and by all other means of proof, whether he was innocent or guilty. Juries were accustomed to ascertain the truth of facts, by the defendant's oath of purgation, together with that of his compurgators. . . Both of them (jurymen and compurgators) were obliged to swear that they would tell truth.
According to the simple idea of our forefathers, guilt or innocence was regarded as a mere matter of fact; and it was thought that no man, who knew the real circumstances of a case, could be at a loss to determine whether the culprit ought to be condemned or acquitted." 1 Millar's Hist. View of Eng. Gov., ch. 12, p. 332 - 4.