The following law of Ethelred has the same application: "Let there be gemots in every wapentace; and let twelve of the eldest thegns go out with the gerefa, and swear on the relics, which shall be given into their hands, that they will condemn no innocent man, nor screen any that is guilty." This passage seems to have no meaning but so far as it alludes to a jury.

Two other laws are as applicable: "If any be accused that he has fed the man who hath broken our lord's peace, let him absolve himself with thrinna twelve, and let the gerefa name the absolving persons; and this law shall stand where the thegns are of the same mind. If they differ, let it stand as eight of them shall declare." This is surely a jury, of whom eight constituted the legal majority.

There is another passage, in the laws made by the English witan and the Welsh counsellors, which bears upon this subject: "Twelve lahmen, of whom six shall be English and six shall be Welsh, shall enjoin right. They shall lose all that they have if they enjoin erroneously, or absolve themselves that they knew no better."P

On the whole, it would seem that the custom of letting the oaths of a certain number of men determine legal disputes in favour of the person for whom they swore, was the origin of the English jury. It was an improvement on this ancient custom, that jurators were named by the court instead of being selected by the parties. It was a further progress towards our present mode of jury, that the jurators were to hear the statements of both parties before they gave their deciding veredictum, or oath of the truth. While the ordeals were popular, the trials by jurators were little used; but as these blind appeals to Heaven became unfashionable, the process of the legal tribunals was more resorted to, and juries became more frequent.

The excellence of the English trial by jury seems to arise from the impartiality of the sheriff in summoning a sufficient number of jurors: from their being indifferently called and put on the trial at the time of the cause coming on; from their having no interest or prejudices as to the matter in decision; from their habits of serving on juries; from their general good meaning and common sense; from a fair sentiment of their own importance as judges of the fact of the case; from their moral sense of their own duties as a jury; from a conscientious desire of doing right between the parties; from an acuteness of mind which prevents them from being misled by declamation; from

n Wilk. p. 117.

• Ibid. p. 118.

P Ibid. p. 125.

The following passage in the old law-book, the Mirror, shows that jurors were used in the time of Alfred. It says of this king, "Il pendist les suitors d'Dorcester, pur ceo que ils judgerent un home a la mort per jurors de lour franchise pur felony que il fist; en le forrein et dount ils ne puissent conustre pur la forrainte." p. 300.

the respectful attention to the observations and legal directions of the presiding judge; and from a general acquaintance of the rules of wrong and right between man and man. These qualities cannot be attained by any country on a sudden; our population has been educated to these important duties by many centuries of their practical discharge, and therefore it will be long before either the juries of Scotland, France, Spain, or Germany, can equal the English in utility, efficiency, judgment, or rectitude.

APPENDIX.

No. IV.

ON THE AGRICULTURE AND LANDED PROPERTY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

CHAPTER I.

Their Husbandry.

THE agricultural state may have been coeval with the pastoral, in the climates of the East, where nature is so profuse of her rural gifts, that cultivation is scarcely requisite; but in the more ungenial regions of the north of Europe, where the food of man is not to be obtained from the earth, without the union of skill and labour, the pastoral state seems to have been the earliest occupation of uncivilized man. While this taste prevailed, agricultural attentions were disreputable and despised, as among the ancient Germans. But when population became more numerous and less migratory, husbandry rose in human estimation and use, until at length it became indispensable to the subsistence of the nation who pursued it.

When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, they came into a country which had been under the Roman power for about four hundred years, and where agriculture, after its more complete subjection by Agricola, had been so much encouraged, that it had become one of the western granaries of the empire. The Britons, therefore, of the fifth century may be considered to have pursued the best system of husbandry then in use, and their lands to have been extensively cultivated with all those exterior circumstances which mark established proprietorship and improvement; as small farms; inclosed fields; regular divisions into meadow, arable, pasture, and wood; fixed boundaries; planted

hedges; artificial dykes and ditches; selected spots for vineyards, gardens, and orchards; connecting roads and paths; scattered villages, and larger towns, with appropriate names for every spot and object that marked the limits of each property, or the course of each way. All these appear in the earliest Saxon charters, and before the combating invaders had time or ability to make them, if they had not found them in the island. Into such a country the Anglo-Saxon adventurers came, and by these facilities to rural civilization soon became an agricultural people. The natives, whom they despised, conquered, and enslaved, became their educators and servants in the new arts, which they had to learn, of grazing and tillage; and the previous cultivation practised by the Romanized Britons will best account for the numerous divisions, and accurate and precise descriptions of land which occur in almost all the Saxon charters. No modern conveyance could more accurately distinguish or describe the boundaries of the premises which it conveyed.

The Anglo-Saxons seem to have had both large and small farms, as both are enumerated in the Domesday Register; and it is most probable that the more extensive possessions, though belonging to one proprietor, were cultivated in small subdivisions. The number of petty proprietors was, according to the same record, greater in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, where the Northmen colonists settled themselves, than in other parts of the island. But the British custom of gavelkind, which preceded the AngloSaxon invasions, was favourable to the increase of small proprietorships. Large farms seem to be the best adapted to bring an extensive surface of the country into a state of cultivation, but not for raising the greatest quantity of produce from every part. Small farms, manual labour, and that minute and frequent tillage which the larger owner will not think of, or descend to, will probably obtain the most abundant harvests from the particular lands to which they are applied.

It must, however, be recollected, that large portions of the country were, in every part, in a state of forests, lakes, pools, marsh, moor, slough, and heath; but they turned the watery parts, which they had not the skill or the means to drain, to the best advantage, by making them productive of fish. In most of their ditches we read of eels, and in several descriptions, of fish waters. Brooks and bourns were so common as to form parts of almost all their boundaries.

The Anglo-Saxons cultivated the art of husbandry with some attention. The articles which they raised from the earth, and the animals which they fed, have been mentioned in the chapter on their food. A few particulars of their practical husbandry need only be mentioned here.

They used hedges and ditches to separate their fields and

lands; and these were made necessary by law; for if a freeman broke through a hedge, he had to pay six shillings. A ceorl was ordered to keep his farm enclosed both winter and summer; and if damage arose to any one who suffered his gate to be open, and his hedge to be broken down, he was subjected to legal consequences.

They had common of pasture attached to the different portions of land which they possessed; and they had other extensive districts laid out in meadow. Every estate had also an appropriated quantity of wood. In Domesday-book, the ploughed land, the meadow, the pasture, and the wood, are separately mentioned, and their different quantities estimated.

They sowed their wheat in spring. It was a law, that he who had twenty hides of land should take care that there should be twelve hides of it sown when he was to leave it.

They had ploughs, rakes, sickles, scythes, forks, and flails, very like those that have been commonly used in this country. They had also carts or wagons. Their wind-mills and watermills are frequently mentioned, in every period of their history.

Their woods were an object of their legislative attention. If any one burnt or cut down another's wood without permission, he was to pay five shillings for every great tree, and five pennies for every other, and thirty shillings besides, as a penalty. By another law, this offence was more severely punished.

They were careful of the sheep. It was ordered by an express law, that these animals should keep their fleece until midsummer, and that the value of a sheep should be one shilling until a fortnight after Easter.i

There are some curious delineations in a Saxon calendar, which illustrate some of their agricultural labours.

In January are men ploughing with four oxen; one drives, another holds the plough, and another scatters seeds.

In February men are represented as cutting or pruning trees, of which some resemble vines.

In March one is digging, another is with a pick-axe, and a third is sowing.

In April three persons are pictured as sitting and drinking, with two attendants; another is pouring out liquor into a horn; and another is holding a horn to his mouth.

These appear in most of the boundaries described in the Saxon grants. Hedges are mentioned in Domesday. A nemus ad sepes faciendum occurs in Middlesex, fo. 127.

p. 244.

< Ibid. p. 21.

e Wilk. Leg. p. 25.

Their drawings in their MSS. show a great resemblance between the Saxon instruments and those still used in the northern counties of England.

8 Wilk. p. 37.

h Ibid. p. 21.

i Ibid. p. 25, 23.

i Cott. MS. Tib. B. 5. See them copied in Strutt's Hord. Angl. vol. i. tab. x.

xi. xii.