Hostname: page-component-8678677fb7-9r95c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-10-25T01:03:31.249Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Origins of the Medieval English Jury: Frankish, English, or Scandinavian?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Ralph V. Turner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Serious study of the origins of the jury began in the time of William Stubbs and F. W. Maitland, when the work of the German historical school of jurisprudence reached England. Until then knowledge of the medieval English jury before the time of Henry II had been more legendary than real. William Blackstone had traced the common law to a compilation that King Alfred supposedly commanded to be made. Blackstone had written in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, “Some authors have endeavoured to trace the original of juries up as high as the Britons themselves, the first inhabitants of our island; but certain it is that they were in use among the earliest Saxon colonies.”

In the mid-nineteenth century the Anglo-Saxon origin of the jury was still a popular legend in England, but the German school of legal history sought a more scientific study of the problem. A representative of that group, Heinrich Brunner, in his book, Die Entstehung der Schwurgerichte, rejected the traditional teaching that the jury was Germanic and popular in origin. Instead, he believed it to be royal in origin, an authoritarian means of gathering information, particularly information of a financial nature. It first appeared as the inquest of the Frankish kings, inherited from the imperial Roman fisc. It passed from them to the Norman dukes and then was introduced to England with William. According to Brunner the Norman kings reserved this fact-finding technique for themselves, extending it to their subjects in only a few cases.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , May 1968 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1968

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1. Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England (London, 1823), I, 67–70Google Scholar: Introduction, sec. iii.

2. Ibid., III, 381: Bk. III, ch. xxiii.

3. Brunner, Heinrich, Die Entstehung der Schwurgerichte (Berlin, 1872)Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., p. 87.

5. Stubbs, William, Constitutional History of England (Oxford, 1874–1878), I, 246Google Scholar. For an analysis of Stubbs's point of view, see Cantor, Norman F. (ed.), William Stubbs on the English Constitution (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, Introduction.

6. Printed as Maitland, F. W., The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge, 1908, reprinted 1961), p. 120Google Scholar.

7. SirPollock, Frederick and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law (2nd ed.; Cambridge, 1895), I, 140–42Google Scholar.

8. Haskins, C. H., Norman Institutions [Harvard Historical Studies, XXIV] (Cambridge, Mass., 1918)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. vi, “The Early Norman Jury,” pp. 196-238; Haskins, C. H., “The Early Norman Jury,” A.H.R., VIII (1903), 613–40Google Scholar. The Brunner thesis has continued to find acceptance in English constitutional and legal histories. E.g., Holdsworth, W. S., A History of English Law (London, 1903), I, 145Google Scholar; Plucknett, T. F. T., A Concise History of the Common Law (5th rev. ed.; London, 1956), pp. 107–12Google Scholar; Adams, G. B., Constitutional History of England (rev. ed.; New York, 1934), p. 86Google Scholar; Jolliffe, J. E. A., The Constitutional History of Medieval England (3rd ed.; London, 1954), pp. 207–09Google Scholar; Lyon, Bryce, A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England (New York, 1960), pp. 183–84Google Scholar.

9. Whitelock, Dorothy (ed.), English Historical Documents, c. 500-1042 (Oxford, 1955), p. 7Google Scholar.

10. Brunner, , Schwurgerichte, pp. 402–04Google Scholar; Vinogradoff, Paul, English Society in the Eleventh Century (Oxford, 1908), p. 7Google Scholar.

11. Stubbs, , Constitutional History, I, 427.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., I, 655.

13. Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law, I, 142Google Scholar. Hurnard, Naomi D., “The Jury of Presentment and the Assize of Clarendon,” E.H.R., LVI (1941), 374–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hurnard took issue with Maitland and wrote that there was no reason why the Danish example should not have been followed in Saxon areas, even though the Wantage code did not apply to them directly. Ibid., LVI, 376-77.

14. Holdsworth, , History of English Law, I, 147.Google Scholar

15. Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law, I, 143.Google Scholar

16. Vinogradoff, , English Society, p. 6Google Scholar.

17. Ibid., p. 7.

18. Hurnard, , “Jury of Presentment,” E.H.R., LVI, 378Google Scholar.

19. Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., Law and Legislation from Aethelberht to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1966), p. 25Google Scholar.

20. Van Caenegem, R. C., Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill [Selden Society, LXXVII] (London, 1959), p. 58Google Scholar and n. 3.

21. Ibid., p. 59.

22. Stenton, Lady Doris M., English Justice between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter 1066-1215 [Memoirs of Amer. Phil. Soc., LX] (Philadelphia, 1964), p. 17Google Scholar.

23. Ibid., pp. 15-16.

24. SirStenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England [Oxford History of England] (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1947), p. 503Google Scholar.

25. Ibid., p. 643.

26. Stenton, Doris M., English Justice, p. 15Google Scholar; Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, p. 643Google Scholar, n. 2; Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963), p. 205Google Scholar; Douglas, David, William the Conqueror (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), p. 309Google Scholar. Van Caenegem, , Royal Writs, p. 57Google Scholar, n. 2, admits the lack of documentary evidence, but he does not conclude from this that there could not have been inquests under the Normans.

27. Fauroux, Marie (ed.), Recueil des Actes des Dues de Normandie (911-1066) [Mémoires de la Socièté des Antiquaires de Normandie] (Caen, 1961)Google Scholar.

28. Bouard, Michel, “De la Neustrie Carolingienne à la Normandie féodale: continuité ou discontinuité?” Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., XXVIII (1955), 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Neither does Douglas, David, “The Rise of Normandy,” Proc. Br. Academy, XXXIII (1947), 101–31Google Scholar, find much continuity. Boussard, Jacques, Le Gouvernement d'Henri II Plantagenet (Paris, 1956), pp. 292–93Google Scholar, acknowledges the survival of the Carolingian inquest in Flanders and Normandy, but he finds it surviving too in the feudal procedure of Aquitaine, which he feels may be the source of Henry II's juries.

29. Bougert, Yvonne, Recherches sur les cours laïques du Xe au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1946), pp. 262–65Google Scholar.

30. Hurnard, , “Jury of Presentment,” E.H.R., LVI, 395–96Google Scholar.

31. Haskins, , Norman Institutions, pp. 237–38Google Scholar.

32. d'Anisy, Lechaude, Grands Rôles des Échiquiers de Normandie (Caen, 1846), pp. 196–97Google Scholar, case concerning the priory of Belleme. Gallia Christiana, XI (Paris, 1759)Google Scholar, cols. 61-65, case concerning the abbey of Fontenay.

33. Stenton, Doris M., English Justice, p. 15Google Scholar.

34. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, p. 205Google Scholar; Richardson, and Sayles, , Law and Legislation, p. 117Google Scholar, an inquest into the fiefs of the Bishop of Bayeux.

35. Richardson, and Sayles, , Law and Legislation, p. 117Google Scholar.

36. Douglas, , William the Conqueror, p. 309Google Scholar.

37. Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 644–49Google Scholar, summarizes what may be considered the standard account of the method of compiling Domesday Book.

38. Bigelow, Melville Madison, Placita Anglo-Normanniea (London, 1879), pp. 34–36Google Scholar. The case is discussed in Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, pp. 207–08Google Scholar, and in Van Caenegem, , Royal Writs, pp. 62–63Google Scholar.

39. Davis, H. W. C. (ed.), Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum (Oxford, 1913), IGoogle Scholar, No. 528; Van Caenegem, , Royal Writs, p. 83Google Scholar.

40. Brunner, , Schwurgerichte, pp. 463–66Google Scholar; Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law, I, 144.Google Scholar

41. Haskins, , Norman Institutions, p. 215Google Scholar; Haskins, , “The Early Norman Jury,” A.H.R., VIII, 618Google Scholar.

42. Haskins, , Norman Institutions, pp. 196–238Google Scholar, suit brought by Osmund Vasce and suit between William Fitz Thetion and the church of St.-Etienne.

43. Ibid., p. 226.

44. Sayles, G. O., The Medieval Foundations of England (London, 1948), p. 336Google Scholar. Haskins's theory about the church courts is also rejected by Hurnard, , “Jury of Presentment,” E.H.R., LVI, 395Google Scholar.

45. Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law, I, 42-43, 151–53Google Scholar.

46. Hurnard, , “Jury of Presentment,” E.H.R., LVI, 378Google Scholar; Pipe Roll H Henry I, pp. 28, 34, 69, 103.

47. Hurnard, , “Jury of Presentment,” E.H.R., LVI, 378-79, 382–83Google Scholar.

48. Ibid., LVI, 383; Pipe Roll 2-4 Henry II, p. 127.

49. Stewart-Brown, Ronald, The Serjeants of the Peace in Medieval England and Wales (Manchester, 1936), p. 79Google Scholar.

50. Sayles, , Medieval Foundations, p. 335Google Scholar.

51. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance of Mediaeval England, pp. 182–84Google Scholar. Cam, Helen, Liberties and Communities in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1944)Google Scholar, ch. iv, “Suitors and Scabini,” p. 52, also thought that the twelve thegns were doomsmen, much like the scabini of the Carolingian courts.

52. Van Caenegem, , Royal Writs, pp. 60–61Google Scholar.

53. Ibid., pp. 69-71. Two versions of the dispute survive: Hart, W. H. and Lyons, P. A. (eds.), Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia [Rolls Series] (London, 1884–1893), I, 188Google Scholar, No. 115, and III, 38-39, No. 544. Cambridge University Library, Red Book of Thorney, II, fol. 372.

54. Van Caenegem, , Royal Writs, p. 59Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., pp. 72-76.

56. Stenton, Doris M., English Justice, p. 17Google Scholar.

57. Richardson, and Sayles, , Law and Legislation, p. 118Google Scholar.