Those barons who held courts and administered justice to their vassals scattered over the land, of which there were twenty-two in the principality of Syria, based their decisions also upon these assizes; they did not, however, sit in their own right as patrimonial judges, but by royal concession, and the king could at any time he chose preside over these courts, associating with himself any number of his liegemen to sit with him.
Besides these noble vassals, called also the 'chivalry of the kingdom,'[5] there was a very considerable Latin population who held no fiefs, but still were perfectly free men, and were designated as citizens.[6] We find in our work no statement of their political relations; we only know that they had their own law, and that in the issue of the ordinances for the government of their towns or cities, they had a right to participate, and were obliged, in case of need in the land of Jerusalem, to furnish, as were also the clergy, a certain quota of foot soldiers.
To this Latin population justice was administered by a court of sworn burghers, presided over in Jerusalem itself by the viscount of the kingdom, and elsewhere by the viscounts or bailiffs of the several cities. Of these courts there were thirty-seven in the principality of Jerusalem. This was called the lower court, or court of the burghers, and the laws which formed its rule of judgment, 'the assizes of the burghers' court.'
The jurisdiction of the two above-named courts did not, however, extend over all subjects, since that of the clerical courts embraced matters pertaining to the laity, which are now no longer regarded as ecclesiastical: for instance, the case of husband and wife treating each other with mutual blows; for it would seem that these connubial feuds were not quite prevented, either by the gallantry of this time of chivalry, or by the feeling which had animated the rushing crowds when they left Europe for the Orient, that they were going to a land elevated above the range of terrene sins and troubles—perhaps to that they had heard called heaven.
In the seaports, the Italians and people of Marseilles enjoyed the right of being tried by judges of their own, and in accordance with the usages of their own countries; and as if to make this checkerwork quite complete, the Syrian Christians were allowed trial before the rajis or presidents of their several towns. In this latter respect a change was introduced somewhat gradually, which was quite remarkable in view of the prevalent ideas of the times. Feudalism had tended to concentrate the power as much as possible in the same hands, without regard to the difference of matter in question—that is, to divide labor by quantity, and not by quality. But here we find for the first time a division of jurisdiction according to the matter, and in the later period of the kingdom, marine and commercial courts were established. The former, called 'courts of the chain'[7] (from the chain by which the entrance to the harbor was closed), gave judgment in questions of freight or payment of sailors' wages, or in any questions which might arise between the ship-owners and captains. The commercial court,[8] which, in addition to its own special functions, took the place of the properly Syrian courts, was constituted of four Syrian and two Frankish judges, under the presidency of a Frank. This was an important measure, and indicated great progress in international commercial intercourse, since in other matters the various nationalities of the kingdom were so strictly distinguished that the Syrian could not be witness against the Greek, or the Frank against the Armenian, or the Jacobite against the Nestorian, etc. In commerce and trade, the assizes held not so strictly in relation to religion and national descent; for whether Syrian or Greek, Jew or Samaritan, Nestorian or Saracen, they were still men, as well as the Franks, and must pay or serve according to judgment rendered, just as in the burghers' court, and hence it was determined that the court of commerce should apply the assizes of the burghers' court.
The above is given as the basis upon which the legislation of the kingdom rested, and now we may best hear the assizes themselves in regard to the beginnings of this legislation. In the first chapter of the assizes of the high court, as given us by John of Ibelin, we have the following:
'When the holy city of Jerusalem was won from the enemies of the cross, and restored to the true men of the Saviour, * * * when the princes and barons who conquered it had chosen, as king and lord of the kingdom of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Boulogne, * * * who was a man of understanding, and anxious to place the said kingdom in a good condition, and to have his people and all others who should come and go and dwell in the kingdom, guided, kept, ruled, sustained, held together, and judged according to justice and reason, he chose, upon the advice of the patriarch of the holy city and church of Jerusalem, and that of the princes, barons, and wisest men he could find, prudent men, whose business it should be to inquire and know from the people of various lands there present, what were the customs of their respective countries. All that these men could ascertain they wrote, or caused to be written, and laid before Duke Godfrey, who assembled the patriarch and the other people mentioned above, showed them the result, and caused the papers to be read to them. With their counsel and acquiescence he took from the report what seemed to him good, and made out from the same assizes and customs, which should be held, applied, and observed in the kingdom of Jerusalem.'
Our author further tells us that both Godfrey himself and the later kings, in their diets of the kingdom, extended and improved these laws. The diets were generally held at Acre, at the season of the arrival of the pilgrims from Europe, as this gave opportunity to ascertain what was the law of their several homes in relation to the matter in question; and it is even said that messengers were sent over the sea expressly for this purpose. William of Tyre, the celebrated chronicler of the time, has preserved to us an interesting case of this special legislation. He says that after the conquest of the holy city, and return home of most of the pilgrims, the danger from the Saracens having become imminent, many of the newly invested feudal tenants began to desert their fiefs, upon which Godfrey issued the following assize:
'Whoever shall hold such deserted fief in possession for one year, shall be considered as having gained it by prescriptive right, and shall be defended in its possession against the previous owner who has deserted it.'
The same William of Tyre tells us of a diet held at Neapolis in Samaria, in the year 1120, 'at which, in order to banish from the land the immoralities and crying abuses which had crept into it, there were issued comprehensive regulations, embraced in twenty-five chapters; and it seems from the form of the oath of the later kings that Amalrick I and his son Baldwin IV had undertaken a formal revision of the legislation.' It is therefore probable that we retain very little of the system established immediately upon the conquest. If we had no evidence of revisions and changes, the sad and unquiet times through which Godfrey had to pass would fully justify this conjecture.