Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/132

 118 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S inevitably known to the whole village or township, became useless when new social and industrial conditions had des- troyed the older and simpler modes of life. The procedure of the courts was antiquated and no longer guided by con- sistent principles. Their modes of trial were so cumbrous, formal, and inflexible that it was scarcely possible to avoid some minute technical mistake which might invalidate the final decision. / The business of the larger courts, too, was for the most / part carried on in French under sheriff, or bailiff, or lord of the manor. The Norman nobles did not know Latin, they were but gradually learning English; the bulk of the lesser clergy perhaps spoke Latin, but did not know Nor- man ; the poorer people spoke only English ; the clerks who from this time began to note down the proceedings of the king's judges in Latin must often have been puzzled by dia- lects of English strange to him. When each side in a trial claimed its own customary law, and neither side understood the speech of the other, the president of the court had every temptation to be despotic and corrupt, and the interpreter between him and his suitors became an important person who had much influence in deciding what mode of procedure was to be followed. The sheriff, often holding a hereditary post and fearing therefore no check to his despotism, added to the burden of the unhappy freeholders by a custom of sum- moning at his own fancy special courts, and laying -heavy fines on those who did not attend them. Even when the law was fairly administered there was a growing number of cases in which the rigid forms of the court actually inflicted injustice, as questions constantly arose which lay far out- side the limits of the old customary law of the Germanic tribes, or of the scanty knowledge of Roman law which had penetrated into other codes. The men of that day looked too often with utter hopelessness to the administration of justice; there was no peril so great in all the dangers that surrounded their lives as the peril of the law; there was no oppression so cruel as the oppression wrought by the harsh and rigid forms of the courts. From such calamities the miserable and despairing victims could look for no help