The origin of the system in England has been much investigated by lawyers and historians. The result of these investigations is a fairly general agreement that the germ of jury trial is to be found in the Frankish inquest (recognitio or inquisitio) transplanted into England by the Norman kings. The essence of this inquest was the summoning of a body of neighbours by a public officer to give answer upon oath (recognoscere veritatem) on some question of fact or law (jus), or of mixed fact and law. At the outset the object of the inquiry was usually to obtain information for the king, e.g. to ascertain facts needed for assessing taxation. Indeed Domesday Book appears to be made up by recording the answers of inquests.

The origin of juries is very fully discussed in W. Forsyth’s History of Trial by Jury (1852), and the various theories advanced are more concisely stated in W. Stubbs’s Constitutional History (vol. i.) and in E. A. Freeman’s Norman Conquest (vol. v.). Until the modern examination of historical documents proved the contrary, the jury system, like all other institutions, was popularly regarded as the work of a single legislator, and in England it has been usually assigned to Alfred the Great. This supposition is without historical foundation, nor is it correct to regard the jury as “copied from this or that kindred institution to be found in this or that German or Scandinavian land,” or brought over ready made by Hengist or by William.[2] “Many writers of authority,” says Stubbs, “have maintained that the entire jury system is indigenous in England, some deriving it from Celtic tradition based on the principles of Roman law, and adopted by the Anglo-Saxons and Normans from the people they had conquered. Others have regarded it as a product of that legal genius of the Anglo-Saxons of which Alfred is the mythical impersonation, or as derived by that nation from the customs of primitive Germany or from their intercourse with the Danes. Nor even when it is admitted that the system of ‘recognition’ was introduced from Normandy have legal writers agreed as to the source from which the Normans themselves derived it. One scholar maintains that it was brought by the Norsemen from Scandinavia; another that it was derived from the processes of the canon law; another that it was developed on Gallic soil from Roman principles; another that it came from Asia through the crusades,” or was borrowed by the Angles and Saxons from their Slavonic neighbours in northern Europe. The true answer is that forms of trial resembling the jury system in various particulars are to be found in the primitive institutions of all nations. That which comes nearest in time and character to trial by jury is the system of recognition by sworn inquest, introduced into England by the Normans. “That inquest,” says Stubbs, “is directly derived from the Frank capitularies, into which it may have been adopted from the fiscal regulations of the Theodosian code, and thus own some distant relationship with the Roman jurisprudence.” However that may be, the system of “recognition” consisted in questions of fact, relating to fiscal or judicial business, being submitted by the officers of the crown to sworn witnesses in the local courts. Freeman points out that the Norman rulers of England were obliged, more than native rulers would have been, to rely on this system for accurate information. They needed to have a clear and truthful account of disputed points set before them, and such an account was sought for in the oaths of the recognitors.[3] The Norman conquest, therefore, fostered the growth of those native germs common to England with other countries out of which the institution of juries grew. Recognition, as introduced by the Normans, is only, in this point of view, another form of the same principle which shows itself in the compurgators, in the frith-borh (frank-pledge), in every detail of the action of the popular courts before the conquest. Admitting with Stubbs that the Norman recognition was the instrument which the lawyers in England ultimately shaped into trial by jury, Freeman maintains none the less that the latter is distinctively English. Forsyth comes to substantially the same conclusion. Noting the jury germs of the Anglo-Saxon period, he shows how out of those elements, which continued in full force under the Anglo-Normans, was produced at last the institution of the jury. “As yet it was only implied in the requirement that disputed questions should be determined by the voice of sworn witnesses taken from the neighbourhood, and deposing to the truth of what they had seen or heard.” The conclusions of Sir F. Pollock and F.W. Maitland, expressed in their History of English Law, and based on a closer study, are to the same effect.

This inquest then was a royal institution and not a survival from Anglo-Saxon law or popular custom, under which compurgation and the ordeal were the accepted modes of trying issues of fact.

The inquest by recognition, formerly an inquest of office, i.e. to ascertain facts in the interests of the crown or the exchequer, was gradually allowed between subjects as a mode of settling disputes of fact. This extension began with the assize of novel disseisin, whereby the king protected by royal writ and inquest of neighbours every seisin of a freehold. This was followed by the grand assize, applicable to questions affecting freehold or status. A defendant in such an action was enabled by an enactment of Henry II. to decline trial by combat and choose trial by assize, which was conducted as follows. The sheriff summoned four knights of the neighbourhood, who being sworn chose the twelve lawful knights most cognisant of the facts, to determine on their oaths which had the better right to the land. If they all knew the facts and were agreed as to their verdict, well and good; if some or all were ignorant, the fact was certified in court, and new knights were named, until twelve were found to be agreed. The same course was followed when the twelve were not unanimous. New knights were added until the twelve were agreed. This was called afforcing the assize. At this time the knowledge on which the jurors acted was their own personal knowledge, acquired independently of the trial. “So entirely,” says Forsyth, “did they proceed upon their own previously formed view of the facts in dispute that they seem to have considered themselves at liberty to pay no attention to evidence offered in court, however clearly it might disprove the case which they were prepared to support.” The use of recognition is prescribed by the constitutions of Clarendon (1166) for cases of dispute as to lay or clerical tenure. See Forsyth, p. 131; Stubbs, i. 617.

This procedure by the assize was confined to real actions, and while it preceded, it is not identical with the modern jury trial in civil cases, which was gradually introduced by consent of the parties and on pressure from the judges. Jury trial proper differs from the grand and petty assizes in that the assizes were summoned at the same time as the defendant to answer a question formulated in the writ; whereas in the ordinary jury trial no order for a jury could be made till the parties by their pleadings had come to an issue of fact and had put themselves on the country, posuerunt se super patriam (Pollock and Maitland, i. 119-128; ii. 601, 615, 621).

The Grand Jury.—In Anglo-Saxon times there was an institution analogous to the grand jury in criminal cases, viz. the twelve senior thegns, who, according to an ordinance of Æthelred II., were sworn in the county court that they would accuse no innocent man and acquit no guilty one. The twelve thegns were a jury of presentment or accusation, like the grand jury of later times, and the absolute guilt or innocence of those accused by them had to be determined by subsequent proceedings—by compurgation or ordeal. Whether this is the actual origin of the grand jury or not, the assizes of Clarendon (1166) and Northampton (1176) establish the criminal jury on a definite basis.

In the laws of Edward the Confessor and the earlier Anglo-Saxon kings are found many traces of a public duty to bring offenders to justice, by hue and cry, or by action of the frith-borh, township, tithing or hundred. By the assize of Clarendon it is directed that inquiry be made in each county and in each hundred by twelve lawful (legaliores) men of the hundred, and by four lawful men from each of the four vills nearest to the scene of the alleged crime, on oath to tell the truth if in the hundred or vill there is any man accused (rettatus aut publicatus) as a robber or murderer or thief, or receiver of such. The assize of Northampton added forgery of coin or charters (falsonaria) and arson. The inquiry is to be held by the justices in eyre, and by the sheriffs in their county courts. On a finding on the oath aforesaid, the accused was to be taken and to go to the ordeal. By the articles of visitation of 1194, four knights are to be chosen from the county who by their oath shall choose two lawful knights of each hundred or wapentake, or, if knights be wanting, free and legal men, so that the twelve may answer for all matters within the hundred, including, says Stubbs, “all the pleas of the crown, the trial of malefactors and their receivers, as well as a vast amount of civil business.” The process thus described is now regarded as an employment of the Frankish inquest for the collection of fama publica. It was alternative to the rights of a private accuser by appeal, and the inquest were not exactly either accusers or witnesses, but gave voice to public repute as to the criminality of the persons whom they presented. From this form of inquest has developed the grand jury of presentment or accusation, and the coroner’s inquest, which works partly as a grand jury as to homicide cases, and partly as an inquest of office as to treasure trove, &c.

The number of the grand jury is fixed by usage at not less than twelve nor more than twenty-three jurors. Unanimity is not required, but twelve must concur in the presentment or indictment.[4] This jury retains so much of its ancient character that it may present of its own knowledge or information, and is not tied down by rules of evidence. After a general charge by the judge as to the bills of indictment on the file of the court, the grand jury considers the bills in private and hears upon oath in the grand jury chamber some or all the witnesses called in support of an indictment whose names are endorsed upon the bill. It does not as a rule hear counsel or solicitors for the prosecution, nor does it see or hear the accused or his witnesses, and it is not concerned with the nature of the defence, its functions being to ascertain whether there is a prima facie case against the accused justifying his trial. If it thinks that there is such a case, the indictment is returned into court as a true bill; if it thinks that there is not, the bill is ignored and returned into court torn up or marked “no bill,” or “ignoramus.” Inasmuch as no man can be put on trial for treason or felony, and few are tried for misdemeanour, without the intervention of the grand jury, the latter has a kind of veto with respect to criminal prosecutions. The grand jurors are described in the indictment as “the jurors for our lord the king.” As such prosecutions in respect of indictable offences are now in almost all cases begun by a full preliminary inquiry before justices, and inasmuch as cases rarely come before a grand jury until after committal of the accused for trial, the present utility of the grand jury depends very much on the character of the justices’ courts. As a review of the discretion of stipendiary magistrates in committing cases for trial, the intervention of the grand jury is in most cases superfluous; and even when the committing justices are not lawyers, it is now a common opinion that their views as to the existence of a case to be submitted to a jury for trial should not be over-ridden by a lay tribunal sitting in private, and in this opinion many grand jurors concur. But the abolition of the grand jury would involve great changes in criminal procedure for which parliament seems to have no appetite. Forsyth thinks that the grand jury will often baffle “the attempts of malevolence” by ignoring a malicious and unfounded prosecution; but it may also defeat the ends of justice by shielding a criminal with whom it has strong political or social sympathies. The qualification of the grand jurymen is that they should be freeholders of the county—to what amount appears to be uncertain—and they are summoned by the sheriff, or failing him by the coroner.

The coroner’s jury must by statute (1887) consist of not more than twenty-three nor less than twelve jurors. It is summoned by the coroner to hold an inquest super visum corporis in cases of sudden or violent death, and of death in prisons or lunatic asylums, and to deal with treasure trove. The qualification of the coroner’s jurors does not depend on the Juries Acts 1825 and 1870, and in practice they are drawn from householders in the immediate vicinity of the place where the inquest is held. Unanimity is not required of a coroner’s jury; but twelve must concur in the verdict. If it charges anyone with murder or manslaughter, it is duly recorded and transmitted to a court of assize, and has the same effect as an indictment by a grand jury, i.e. it is accusatory only and is not conclusive, and is traversable, and the issue of guilt or innocence is tried by a petty jury.

The Petty Jury.—The ordeal by water or fire was used as the final test of guilt or innocence until its abolition by decree of the Lateran council (1219). On its abolition it became necessary to devise a new mode of determining guilt as distinguished from ill fame as charged by the grand jury. So early as 1221 accused persons had begun to put themselves on the country, or to pay to have a verdict for “good or ill”; and the trial seems to have been by calling for the opinions of the twelve men and the four townships, who may have been regarded as a second body of witnesses who could traverse the opinion of the hundred jury. (See Pollock and Maitland, ii. 646.) The reference to judicium parium in Magna Carta is usually taken to refer to the jury, but it is clear that what is now known as the petty jury was not then developed in its present form. “The history of that institution is still in manuscript,” says Maitland.