"His court was ambulatory, and assembled only twice a year, unless the distribution of justice required that its meetings should be oftener. Every freeholder in the county was obliged to attend it; and should he refuse this service, his possessions were seized, and he was forced to find surety for his appearance. The neighboring earls held not their courts on the same day; and, what seems very singular, no judge was allowed, after meals, to exercise his office.
"The druids also, or priests, in Germany, as we had formerly occasion to remark, and the clergy in England, exercised a jurisdiction in the hundred and county courts. They instructed the people in religious duties, and in matters regarding the priesthood; and the princes, earls, or eorldormen, related to them the laws and customs of the community. These judges were mutually a check to each other; but it was expected that they should agree in their judgments, and should willingly unite their efforts for the public interest. [22]
"The meeting (the county court) was opened with a discourse by the bishop, explaining, out of the Scriptures and ecclesiastical canons, their several duties as good Christians and members of the church. After this, the alderman, or one of his assessors, made a discourse on the laws of the land, and the duties of good subjects and good citizens. When these preliminaries were over, they proceede to try and determine, first the causes of the church, next the pleas of the crown, and last of all the controversies of private parties." 8 Henry's History of Great Britain, 348.
This view is corroborated by Tyrrell's Introduction to the History of England; p. 83-84, and by Spence's Origin of the Laws and Political Institutions of Modern Europe, p. 447, and the note on the same page. Also by a law of Canute to this effect, In every county let there be twice a year an assembly, whereat the bishop and the earl shall be present, the one to instruct the people in divine, the other in human, laws. Wilkins, p. 136.
"But the prince or earl performed not, at all times, in person, the obligations of his office. The enjoyment of ease and of pleasure, to which in Germany he had delivered himself over, when disengaged from war, and the mean idea he conceived of the drudgery of civil affairs, made him often delegate to an inferior person the distribution of justice in his district. The same sentiments were experienced by the Saxon nobility; and the service which they owed by their tenures, and the high employments they sustained, called them often from the management of their counties. The progress, too, of commerce, giving an intricacy to cases, and swelling the civil code, added to the difficulty of their office, and made them averse to its duties. Sheriffs, therefore, or deputies, were frequently appointed to transact their business; and though these were at first under some subordination to the earls, they grew at length to be entirely independent of them. The connection of jurisdiction and territory ceasing to prevail, and the civil being separated from the ecclesiastical power, they became the sole and proper officers for the direction of justice in the counties.
"The hundred, however, and county courts were not equal of themselves for the purposes of jurisdiction and order. It was necessary that a court should be erected, of supreme authority, where the disputes of the great should be decided, where the disagreeing sentiments of judges should be reconciled, and where protection should be given to the people against their fraud and injustice.
"The princes accordingly, or chief nobility, in the German communities, assembled together to judge of such matters. The Saxon nobles continued this prerogative; and the king, or, in his absence, the chief justiciary, watched over their deliberations. But it was not on every trivial occasion that this court interested itself. In smaller concerns, justice was refused during three sessions of the hundred, and claimed without effect, at four courts of the county, before there could lie an appeal to it.
"So gradually were these arrangements established, and so naturally did the varying circumstances in the situation of the Germans and Anglo-Saxons direct those successive improvements which the preservation of order, and the advantage of society, called them to adopt. The admission of the people into the courts of justice preserved, among the former, that equality of ranks for which they were remarkable; and it helped to overturn, among the latter, those envious distinctions which the feudal system tended to introduce, and prevented that venality in judges, and those arbitrary proceedings, which the growing attachment to interest, and the influence of the crown, might otherwise have occasioned." Stuart on the Constitution of England, p. 222 to 245.
"In the Anglo-Saxon period, accordingly, twelve only were elected; and these, together with the judge, or presiding officer of the district, being sworn to regard justice, and the voice of reason, or conscience, all causes were submitted to them." Ditto, p. 260.
"Before the orders of men were very nicely disinguished, the jurors were elected from the same rank. When, however, a regular subordination of orders was established, and when a knowledge of property had inspired the necessitous with envy, and the rich with contempt, every man was tried by his equals. The same spirit of liberty which gave rise to this regulation attended its progress. Nor could monarchs assume a more arbitrary method of proceeding. 'I will not' (said the Earl of Cornwall to his sovereign) 'render up my castles, nor depart the kingdom, but by judgment of my peers.' Of this institution, so wisely calculated for the preservation of liberty, all our, historians have pronounced the eulogium." — Ditto, p. 262-3.