Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/528

 47 8 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE persons were then forced to undergo the ordeal to determine their guilt or innocence of the charge thus brought against them. Henry II, however, was dissatisfied with the ordeals as methods of proof long before Innocent III forbade the clergy to take part in them. Henry showed this by ordering these accused persons to leave England even though they passed through the ordeal successfully. At some later date the jury came into use for the actual trial of criminal cases, and after Innocent's decree the or- deals went out of use. The trial jury also consisted of men of the neighborhood and sometimes was the same as the accus- ing jury. At that time there was no objection to having jurymen who were already informed about the circum- stances of the crime or who had formed an opinion about the case. At first, indeed, these were the very men for whom the king's justices were looking. In this institution of the sworn inquest we see central and local governments working together. The new process is The sworn introduced by the king and his justices, but to ^gnoflocal execute it requires the services of the knights activity and freeholders of the neighborhood. Indeed, it is probable that the new procedure would not have taken such general hold, had not the English people already been accustomed in the Anglo-Saxon period to take an active part in keeping the peace and in settling cases in their local courts of the shire and hundred. In fact, one law of the reign of Ethelred II might suggest that there had been something like a grand jury already in the Anglo-Saxon period. It prescribes that a court shall be held in every wapentake, a local division similar to the hundred found in some parts of England, and that "the twelve senior thegns go out and the reeve with them, and swear on the relic that is given them in hand, that they will accuse no innocent man, nor conceal any guilty one." However that may be, in the case of the sworn inquest under Henry II we see the officials of the central government going to the localities for information, which they obtain from a certain number of leading or representative men. By this method, for instance, the Con-