mes have been
interpreted to mean.[11] Yet even they served to emphasize the
fundamental principle upon which the political and legal structure was
intended to be grounded, that, namely, of impartial and unvarying
justice.[12]

[Footnote 11: The term "peers," as here employed,
means only equals in rank. The clause cited does
not imply trial by jury. It comprises a guarantee
simply that the barons should not be judged by
persons whose feudal rank was inferior to their
own. Jury trial was increasingly common in the
thirteenth century, but it was not guaranteed in
the Great Charter.]

[Footnote 12: Good accounts of the institutional
aspects of the Norman-Angevin period are Stubbs,
Constitutional History, I., 315-682, II., 1-164;
Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English
Constitution, I., Bk. 2, Chaps. 2-3; Adams, The
Origin of the English Constitution, Chaps. 1-4; and
White, Making of the English Constitution, 73-119.
Two excellent little books are Stubbs, Early
Plantagenets (London, 1876) and Mrs. J. R. Green,
Henry II. (London, 1892). General accounts will be
found in T. F. Tout, History of England from the
Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward
III., 1216-1377 (London, 1905), and H. W. C. Davis,
England under the Normans and the Angevins (London,
1904). A monumental treatise, though one which
requires a considerable amount of correction, is E.
A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, 6 vols.
(Oxford, 1867-69), and a useful sketch is Freeman,
Short History of the Norman Conquest (3d ed.,
Oxford, 1901). Among extended and more technical
works may be mentioned: F. Pollock and F. W.
Maitland, History of English Law, 2 vols. (2d ed.,
Cambridge, 1898), which, as a study of legal
history and doctrines, supersedes all earlier
works; F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond
(Cambrid